Acurácia do índice de maturação do terceiro molar para estimar a maioridade penal em indivíduos nordestinos

Abstract

The estimation of the age of an individual is relevant in more varied cases of civil and criminal cases such as identification of missing persons, crimes of incapacitates, crimes against minors, homicides, adoption processes, lack of valid documentation and non-illegal traffic of persons. The estimation of the adulthood allows to decide the criminal conduct of an individual, and the cases in which there are no other data or physical characteristics to study the age or the majority, a contribution for this purpose from the evaluation of the dental development process. The objective of this study was to evaluate the applicability of the Molar Third Maturation Index – I3M (CAMERIERE et al., 2008) for the estimation of the majority in a sample of northeastern Brazilians from panoramic radiographic images. Use of Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 software to obtain measurements, according to I3M, in a sample from a dental radiology clinic in João Pessoa/PB. We included only radiographs of individuals between 14 and 23 years old, and excluded images with absence of element 38, distortions, pathologies and suspected pulp impairment of 38, for which it was not applied in the third lower left molar. Of the total sample (n=394), 185 radiographs belonged to males and 209 females, 217 of whom were 18 years of age or older and 177 were underage and were previously diagnosed and/or orthodontically. Logistic regression and verification of the predictive values of sensitivity, specificity and the ROC curve (α=0.05) were performed. (0.08) the sensitivity of 88.4% and the specificity of 73.2%, with an accuracy of 80.8% (95%CI: 76, 4-85.3%) for a Northeastern population and correct age 80.2% of the sample. As for the majority, there was a 73.7% adjustment for a classification "above 18 years" and 88.1% for a classification "below 18 years" (p=0.000). Among the sexes, a correct age classification rate was 84.3% for males and 76.6% for females. There was no statistically significant difference between error rates and between sexes (p≥0.05). It is concluded that the Third Molar Maturation Index is applicable to distinguish an age of adolescents and young adults as inferior or superior / superior to 18 years in the Brazilian Northeast population in both sexes.