To perform a systematic review with meta-analysis to answer the question: is the cervical vertebrae maturation index (CVMI) effective to replace hand-wrist radiograph (gold standard) in determining the pubertal growth spurt in patients undergoing bone growth? A search in three databases was performed, in which studies were selected that compared one of the two main assessment methods for cervical vertebrae (Hassel B, Farman AG. Skeletal maturation evaluation using cervical vertebrae. Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop 1995; 107: 58-66, or Baccetti T, Franchi L, McNamara JA Jr. An improved version of the cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) method for the assessment of mandibular growth. Angle Orthod 2002; 72: 316-23) to a carpal assessment method. The main methodological data from each of the texts were collected and tabulated after. Later, the meta-analysis of the correlation coefficients obtained was performed. 19 articles were selected from an initial 206 articles collected. Regardless of the method used, the results of the meta-analysis showed that every article selected presented a positive correlation between skeletal maturation assessment performed by cervical vertebrae and carpal methods, with discrepancy of values between genders indicating higher correlation for the female gender (0.925; 0.878) than for the male (0.879; 0.842). When the assessment was performed without gender separation, correlation was significant (0.592; 0.688) but lower in the cases when genders were separated. With the results of this meta-analysis, it is safe to affirm that both CVMIs used in the present study are reliable to replace the hand-wrist radiograph in predicting the pubertal growth spurt, considering that the highest values were found in female samples, especially in the method by Hassel and Farman.

Objectives: To review the scientific literature of studies on dental age estimation methods applied to Brazilian children. Methods: A systematic literature review was designed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and registered in PROSPERO (CRD42020136170). Six scientific databases were used as primary search sources (PubMed, Scopus, LILACS, SciELO, Embase and Web of Science) and two databases (Open Grey and Open Thesis) were searched to partially select the “grey literature.” Only cross-sectional studies were included. The risk of bias was assessed by means of Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Tools for Systematic Reviews. The standardized mean difference (SMD) between the estimated dental and chronological ages was meta-analysed via random effects model. Results: The search resulted in 2,527 studies, from which 13 met the eligibility criteria. Out of the eligible studies, 76.92% had low risk of bias and high methodological quality. Ten studies provided proper information to be included in the meta-analysis.The methods and their SMD between estimated and chronological ages were: Willems’=0.05, Lilequist and Lundberg’s = −0.11, Nolla’s = 0.22, Mornstad’s = 0.27, Cameriere’s = −0.31, Demirjian’s = 0.74 and Haavikko’s = −0.87. Conclusion: Although originally trained in populations worldwide, most of the international methods for radiographical dental age estimation had optimal performance in Brazilian children.