Subjects and Methods
This
study utilized a cross-sectional design. The study population was Saudi
children attending the Child Health Services of King Khalid University Hospital
and King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The recruitment
of children took place between June 1997 and May 1999. All selected children
in this sample satisfied the following criteria:
The age of each child was ascertained from the
birth certificate by calculating the chronological age in months from the date
of birth. The nationalities of the children were verified from the place
of birth using the national identity cards of both parents.
For
purposes of this study, an erupted tooth was defined as any tooth with any part
of its crown penetrating the gingiva and visible in the oral cavity. The
determination of tooth eruption was carried out by Lanre L. Bello, BDS, MS,
one of the authors, and a dental hygienist using a mouth mirror in a room with
a good light source. The dental hygienist was adequately trained in the
oral examination technique. The interrater reliability was determined
in an initial examination of the first 20 children by the two examiners and
the agreement was 100%.
The data was transferred into a microcomputer for statistical analysis using the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 9.0) and subjected to probit analysis.7 For each tooth, the percentage of eruption at various age levels was obtained and transformed into probit values from which the mean age and standard deviation of tooth eruption were estimated for males and females. The student t-test for independent samples was used to assess the statistical significance of the difference in mean age of tooth eruption between males and females at the 5% probability level.
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| Citation Number: Vol. 4, No. 3, Page 067 |
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