Medicolegal evaluation of age determination cases

Age determination is an important procedure which is frequently used in anthropologic studies and daily practice of forensic medicine for identification of victims. Nevertheless, in live cases, bone age determination is also a unique method as one of the marker of the physical development and aging. Due to the inconclusive population registry in our country, we used charts prepared according to western civilization standarts such as ?Gök Atlas?, Greulich-Pyle and Tanner Whitehouse methods etc. to determine actual age of case although we know his/her ID.In this study, in live cases, we aimed; to determine characteristics of age determination cases referred to Forensic Medicine Department of Akdeniz University School of Medicine between 2002 and 2011 to evaluate findings and efficiency of used method by comparing literature and to provide data about age determination in purpose to lead future studies will be conducted in our country.We reviewed following characteristics of the cases: place of birth, gender, age at ID, claimed age, reported age, type of institution who request age determination, nature of event which requires age determination, position of consulted case (victim, defendant etc.). We compared reported ages and ages at IDs. We assessed cases into three groups: 1) cases between 0-22 years old whose ages could be determined as a whole number according to ?Gök Atlas?, 2) cases of sexual abuse/assault who constitute almost half of the included cases and 3) cases in whom we confirmed that there was no difference between claimed age and age at ID. Statistical analyses were performed by using SPSS-18 for Windows.In 10 years study period, 58 male (28,3%) and 147 female (71,7%), total 205 age determination were performed. The mean age according to ID was 20,47 (1-73).Most of the age determination cases (n=90, 43,9%) were requested by Civil Courts. The leading purposes for age determination were sexual abuse/assault in women (n=97, 66,0%) and correction of age for men (n=46, 79,3%).The average difference between determined ages and ages at ID was 2,35 in cases between 0-22 years old. Only 15 cases (9,8%) had matched determined and ID ages. The average differences between determined ages and ages at ID were 2,21 and 1,72 for sexual abuse/assault cases and 57 confirmed ID age cases, respectively.As a conclusion, our study and other studies from Turkey has revealed deviation that ages determined according to Gök Atlas were 1-2 year above than ages at ID. Although there is limited literature in Turkey which assessed availability of Greulich Pyle and Tanner Whitehouse methods, these methods seem to be provide more accurate results, however, there is statistically significant difference between chronological and determined ages. Thiemann-Nitz method may be useful in age determination cases in Turkish people but we proposed that instead of using methods suitable for other societies, a unique method should be formed for Turks via examining also tooth eruption and mineralization levels in a sufficient number of eligible samples selected from the country.Keywords: Age determination, bone age, forensic medicine