Usefulness of Demirjian's Stages in Determining the Age of Majority: A Study on South Indian Population

In consideration of the constant increase in juvenile crimes or illegal immigration, need of a reliable means to determine the age of an individual and his/her attainment of age of majority remains to be a fundamental requirement in forensic practice. Mincer et al. in 2009 verified the usefulness of Demirjian tooth developmental stages in discrimination of juvenile/adult status. The third molars are the only available growing teeth during the period of late adolescence and considered to be the reliable biological markers for this purpose. The purpose of this study was to verify the usefulness of Demirjian's stages of root development in discriminating adults and minors in South-Indian individuals. For this purpose, a sample of 506 (227 males and 279 females) orthopantomograms aged between 14 and 22 years were analyzed. The results showed the sensitivity and specificity for stage H to be 0.74 and 0.84 for males and 0.73 and 0.92 for females, respectively. The estimated post-test probability for males and females using stage H was 0.82 and 0.91. Hence, the level of accuracy obtained using Demirjian stage H as a cut off value for discriminating juvenile/adult status may not be sufficient by taking the second type (ethically unacceptable) errors into consideration.