Dental age estimation using four Demirjian’s, Chaillet’s and Willems’ methods in Kosovar children

•We evaluated dental age in Kosovar children by the radiographic study using six methods on mandibular teeth.•The Willems method was the most accurate, if using seven teeth.•Methods using four different teeth were similarly accurate. Tooth formation was recognized as useful body system to assess maturity and predict age. Tooth mineralization is much less affected by the endocrine and different nutritional status than bone mineralization, and teeth formation provides a more reliable indication of chronological age. Demirjian et al. in 1973 presented a scoring system and method for dental age estimation on a sample of French-Canadian children. Chaillet et al. and Willems et al. modified original Demirjian method. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of four Demirjian’s, Chaillet and Willems methods for age estimation in the children of Kosovo. The cross-sectional study was based on the evaluation of the sample of 1022 orthopantomograms (OPTs) of healthy Kosovar children, aged between 5 and 14 years. OPTs were taken from the Radiology unit of University Dentistry Clinical Center of Kosova, as part of random clinical treatment. We tested the accuracy of four methods based on seven mandibular teeth, Demirjian from 1973 (Dem73) and 1976 (Dem76), Chaillet from 2005 (Chaillet) and Willems from 2001 (Willems) and two Demirjian’s methods based on different sets of four teeth (Dem76PM1 and Dem76IN2). For most tested methods, we found statistically significant differences between the chronological age (CA) and dental age (DA) (p