Dental age estimation methods applied to Indian children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Country-specific systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been proposed to compile the available literature and rank methods based on their performance for a target population. India is a country with a vast scientific literature on dental age estimation. This systematic review aimed to provide evidence to help the decision of experts regarding the method of choice for dental age estimation in India. The research protocol was registered in Open Science Framework. Literature Search was performed in Embase, LILACS, MedLine (via PubMed), SciELO, Scopus and Web of Science. Grey Literature was searched in Google Scholar and ProQuest. Observational cross-sectional studies that compared chronological and estimated ages using Demirjian (original [DEM] and Chaillet's modification [modified-DEM]) and Acharya (ACH) methods were included. JBI tool was used to assess the risk of bias. The search detected 9799 studies, out of which 56 were eligible (n = 13,107 panoramic radiographs of Indian individuals). Low risk of bias was registered for 48 studies, while 8 presented a moderate risk of bias. The meta-analysis showed a standardized mean difference between chronological and estimated ages of −0.11 (95%CI: −0.29; 0.07), 0.74 (95%CI: 0.39; 1.09), and −0.01 (95%CI: −0.23; 0.22) years for DEM, modified-DEM and ACH, respectively. High heterogeneity (I² = 88–93%) was observed across studies for all the methods, including subgroup analyses based on sex. This study ranked ACH, DEM and modified-DEM (from the best to the worse) performances in the Indian population.