Towlson K L, Peck D
Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, UK.
Int Dent J. 1990 Jun;40(3):179-82.
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.
为评估儿童的营养状况，了解其实际年龄至关重要。然而，在第三世界国家，儿童的母亲往往无法准确得知孩子的实际年龄。本研究的目的是尝试通过一个相当可靠的参数来评估儿童的实际年龄，即已萌出的牙齿数量，鉴于儿童乳牙萌出的固定模式。该参数具有非专业人员也能轻松评估的优势。对肯尼亚西部一家儿童健康诊所的100名年龄在2至44个月之间的儿童进行了研究，测量了他们的身高、体重和已萌出的牙齿数量。通过标准统计分析，研究牙齿数量是否比儿童身高更能准确估计实际年龄。数据表明，由于在任何给定年龄时牙齿发育阶段存在差异，牙齿数量并非判断幼儿年龄的有用指标。
