Comparison of dental maturation in Hong Kong Chinese and United Kingdom Caucasian populations

Understanding dental maturation in ethnically distinct populations is important in forensic age estimations and the presence of population differences in dental maturation was highly debated. No such comparison had been performed between two major populations; Caucasian and Chinese. This study aims to analyze and compare the maturation of permanent teeth from a sample of Caucasian and Chinese populations. Dental panoramic radiographs of subjects aged 2-24 years belonging to United Kingdom (UK) Caucasian and Hong Kong (HK) Chinese populations were obtained from a teaching hospital. The teeth were scored and reference datasets were developed separately for males and females. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05 and independent sample t-test was conducted between the average ages at assessment for each stage of development for all the teeth in both groups. The HK Chinese were dentally advanced than the UK Caucasians by an average of 5 months, however, reverse trend was observed in third molars (p < 0.05). These findings must be considered whilst utilising population specific reference dataset for dental age estimation.