Nutritional correlates of child development in southern Tunisia. IV. The relation of deciduous dental eruption to somatic development.

Deciduous dental eruption in a group of 658 children below 3 years of age in Southern Tunisia was found to be correlated with the general somatic development. On the other hand, this association was less close than that among the different components of somatic growth, suggesting that dental eruption is less affected by the factors which delay somatic growth in that area. Attempts were made to obtain methods of estimating the ages of children using the number of erupted deciduous teeth, both by means of regression equations and by a table of the median age of children with different numbers of pairs of teeth. In both cases the estimates obtainable are not accurate enough to do more than divide the children into coarse age groups. It is concluded that in anthropometric work there is no substitute for accurately known chronological ages.