Assessment of chronological age of third world children: can a simple tooth count help?

To assess the nutritional status of a child, it is essential to know his chronological age. However, this is often not known accurately by the mothers of children in the Third World. The purpose of this study was an attempt to assess the chronological age of a child by a fairly reliable parameter, i.e. the number of teeth that had erupted, given the fixed pattern of eruption of primary dentition in children. This parameter would have the advantage of being readily assessable by non-trained personnel. One hundred children between the ages of 2 and 44 months, attending a child health clinic in western Kenya, were studied, with measurement of height, weight and number of teeth erupted. By standard statistical analysis, it was investigated whether number of teeth was a more accurate estimation of chronological age than was the child's height. The data indicated that number of teeth is not a useful guide to the age of young children, owing to the variability in dental stage at any given age.