The Agreement of Chronological Age and Cervical Vertebrae Morphology in Lateral Cephalogram in a Selected Iranian Population

Cervical vertebrae morphology is used in planning orthodontic patients’ treatment for assessing skeletal maturation. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between chronological age and Cervical Vertebral Maturation (CVM) stages. In this descriptive-analytical study, 320 lateral cephalograms over an age range of 7-15 years (160 boys and 160 girls) were investigated in the city of Babol, Iran. The subjects were divided into eight age groups. The Baccetti modified version of CVM method was used for the assessment. The assessment consisted of visual analysis of morphological characteristics of the three cervical vertebrae (C2, C3, C4). Data analysis was done using SPSS (version 20) software. P≤0.05 was considered significant. The spearman correlation coefficient between chronological age and cervical vertebral maturation stages was 0.841 (P<0.001) in total sample size, 0.839 (P<0.001) in boys and 0.873 (P<0.001) in girls. The positive likelihood ratio for detecting cervical vertebral stages was low in all age groups; except for age range of 7-8 in boys and girls, and age ranges of 8-10 and 14-15 in the girls. The results of this study demonstrated that the CVM method is reliable for the determination of onset of puberty and despite the high correlation coefficient between chronological age and cervical vertebral maturation stages, the low positive likelihood ratio in most age groups results that the chronological age is a poor indicator for detecting maturation stages.