Age estimation using impacted mandibular third molar teeth in Kerala population

Abstract

Background: The human body becomes disfigured to a great extent so that identification of the individual becomes a challenge. Age determination of unknown human bodies are important in various clinical and scientific disciplines and done by different techniques. Teeth are bestowed with properties of hardness and resilience which makes them important in forensic science. As impacted teeth are least influenced by environmental changes, coronal displacement of cementum in these teeth can be used for estimating age. Result: One hundred and fifty extracted, intact impacted mandibular third molar teeth, taken from individuals in different regions of Kerala, were ground to the thickness of 25 μm to score the coronal displacement of cementum (CDC) in each tooth. Relationship between age and CDC was analysed by linear regression analysis, by making age as dependent variable and CDC as independent variable. Age is derived as Age = 2.387 x CDC + 20.278. Conclusions: The present study is a pioneer work to formulate a regression equation to compute age in Kerala population from impacted mandibular third molar teeth using CDC. The results demonstrate that CDC have a statistically significant association with age in Kerala Population and the resultant formulae was different from other previous studies. Thus our observations validate the need for separate formula for computing age using impacted mandibular third molar teeth in Kerala population.