Assessment of legal adult age of 18 by measurement of open apices of the third molars: Study on the Albanian sample

Intra-rater and inter-raters agreement of I3M were 0.998 and 0.998, respectively and Cohen Kappa for intra-rater and inter-rater agreement in decision on adult or minor was 1.0 and 1.0, respectively. Age distribution gradually decreases as I3M increases in both males and females. The mean age of females is higher than that of males when I3M is between 0.04 and 0.08. Sensitivity test for males was 94.1%, with a 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 85.6-98.4%, and specificity was 90.9% (95%CI 81.3-96.6%). The proportion of correctly classified individuals was 92.5%, with a 95%CI of (86.7%, 96.4%). For females, the sensitivity test was 75.4%, with a 95%CI of (63.1%, 85.2%) and specificity was 96.6%, with a 95%CI of (90.3%, 99.3%). The proportion of correctly classified individuals was 87.5%, with a 95%CI of (81.2%, 92.3%). The results indicate that Cameriere's cut-off value of the third molar index (I3M = 0.08) is useful in discriminating between Albanian adults and juveniles, and encourage us to test its suitability for determining the adult age in individuals from other populations.