Age estimation based on Willems method versus new country-specific method in South African black children

Objective: The Melbourne Assessment of Unilateral Upper Limb Function(commonly referred to as the Melbourne A ssessment) was identiﬁed as atool to quantify the quality of upper extremity function in children with cerebral palsy aged 5 to 15 years in South Africa. Since the tool was nottested in a South African population before, it became necessary to determine its inter-rater and test-retest reliability.Methods: Five South African Black children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy served as the test sample. The raters were 2 neurodevelopmental trained physiotherapists with more than 2 and 8 years of experience in pediatric physiotherapy but novice to the use of the Melbourne Assessment. Both therapists acquainted themselves with the tool kit and manual prior to the rating. The entire assessment of each child was video taped and reassessed a week later by one of the therapists for test-retestreliability. Results: Ratings of the 2 raters and test-retest scores were correlated using the weighted Kappa due to the small sample size. Kappa scores for individual scores for interrater reliability and test-retest was 0, 75 and that for the totalscores were 0, 72 and 0, 82 respectively. Conclusion: These ﬁndings suggest that good inter-tester and test-retest reliability can be achieved for the MelbourneA ssessment when used in a group of South African Black children.

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Age estimation from the acetabulum in South African black males

International Journal of Legal Medicine ◽

10.1007/s00414-015-1299-7 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 130 (3) ◽

pp. 809-817 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

D. Botha ◽

S. Pretorius ◽

J. Myburgh ◽

M. Steyn

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

Black Males ◽

Age Estimation ◽

African Black

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Validating dental age estimation in Kenyan black children and adolescents using the Willems method

Medicine Science and the Law ◽

10.1177/0025802420977379 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 002580242097737

Author(s):

Maria Cadenas de Llano-Pérula ◽

Eunice Kihara ◽

Patrick Thevissen ◽

Donna Nyamunga ◽

Steffen Fieuws ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Age Estimation ◽

Tooth Development ◽

Absolute Error ◽

Black Children ◽

Specific Model ◽

Permanent Teeth ◽

Estimation Model ◽

One Year ◽

Willems Method ◽

Age Prediction

Purpose This study aimed to validate the Willems Belgian Caucasian (Willems BC) age estimation model in a Kenyan sample, to develop and validate a Kenyan-specific (Willems KB) age estimation model and to compare the age prediction performances of both models. Methods Panoramic radiographs of 1038 (523 female, 515 male) Kenyan children without missing permanent teeth and without all permanent teeth fully developed (except third molars) were retrospectively selected. Tooth development of the seven lower-left permanent teeth was staged according to Demirjian et al. The Willems BC model, performed on a Belgian Caucasian sample and a constructed Kenyan-specific model (Willems KB) were validated on the Kenyan sample. Their age prediction performances were quantified and compared using the mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE) and root-mean-square error (RMSE). Results The ME with Willems BC method equalled zero. Hence, there was no systematic under- or overestimation of the age. For males and females separately, the ME with Willems BC was significantly different from zero, but negligible in magnitude (–0.04 and 0.04, respectively). Willems KB was found not to outperform Willems BC, since the MAE and RMSE were comparable (0.98 vs 0.97 and 1.31 vs 1.29, respectively). Although Willems BC resulted in a higher percentage of subjects with predicted age within a one-year difference of the true age (63.3% vs 60.4%, p=0.018), this cannot be considered as clinically relevant. Conclusion There is no reason to use a country-specific (Willems KB) model in children from Kenya instead of the original Willems (BC) model.

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