Browsing by Author "Pereira, Cristiana Palmela"
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- Age estimation of unaccompanied minors: A portuguese overviewPublication . Pereira, Cristiana Palmela; Escobar, Catarina Pereira; Santos, Jorge Costa"In the past decade there has been a considerable increase in the number of unaccompanied asylum seeking children, many of whom appeared to be older than their given age. Dental age assessment has been included as part of the asylum seeking process in Portugal since the Law n. º 27/2008 dated 30 June (the “Asylum Law”). The legal framework of the forensic examination is based in biomedical ethics. The aim is to find the frequency of unaccompanied asylum seeking children with dental evidence of being older 18 years during the period between 2009 and 2013. In this period age estimations have been performed on 82 unaccompanied asylum seeking children whose given ages were queried by the Aliens and Bored Service – SEF, to the South Branch of National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences from Portugal. The dental development was studied on ortopantomograpic radiographs and the developing teeth staged from the tables according to Liversidge (2008), Mincer et al. (1993), Kullmanet al. (1992) and Haavikko (1970). If the dental development was complete, the dental age was estimated from Kvaal et al. (1995). The majority of the unaccompanied asylum seeking children clamed to came from Guinea Conakry, Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Syria, Congo, Morocco and other African countries and non-African countries. There was no statistical significant difference between sexes. The majority gave the age as being 14 or 15 years (70%). Forty percent were found to be 18 years or older by the dental methods. Fifty percent were in need of dental treatment."
- Application of dental morphological characteristics for medical-legal identification: sexual diagnosis in a portuguese populationPublication . Abrantes, Catarina; Santos, Rui; Pestana, Dinis; Pereira, Cristiana Palmela"The main purpose of this work is to investigate the application of dental morphological features as a potential qualitative method of sex classification in medico-legal identification. The classification of 16 non-metric dental traits was performed by ASUDAS (Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System) method. The traits displayed exclusively by the crowns of permanent teeth were analyzed on dental casts of a Portuguese population sample consisting of 53 male and 57 female individuals. No significant differences (p<0.05) were found between males and females for all investigated traits, except for the dental tubercle of tooth 13, for the metaconule of tooth 27 and the canine distal accessory ridge of teeth 33 and 43. Based on the method applied, tooth 43 has proven to be the most dimorphic among the Portuguese population. Further, a gender classification model using significant different traits between both sexes of the teeth 13, 27 and 43 was developed, and it proved to have a reasonable gender classification reliability (with 76.4 percent of correct classification, Cox & Snell’s pseudo R2 equals to 0.344 and Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2 equals to 0.458) although with a significant probability of misclassification."
- Injuries of non-lethal child physical abuse to the crania and orofacial regions: a scientific reviewPublication . Banheiro, R.; Pereira Escobar, C.; Pereira, Cristiana Palmela"The literature states that maltreatment in childhood and youth make up a problem on a global scale that exceeds ethnicities, religions, cultures, social and economic classes. It is also said that more than half of the injuries from maltreatment occur in the head and face. Assuming the particular relevance of orofacial structures, the dentist must know how to observe and recognize the indicators and properly diagnose the injury by maltreatment. This scientific review aimed to understand what types of intraoral lesions, signs or external lesions of the head or neck can be associated with child maltreatment. One primary database was searched so that systematic review articles and meta-analysis, case reports or case series of intraoral lesions, signs or external lesions of the head or neck by child maltreatment could be acquired. The references in the works acquired by electronic search were manually researched and the authors of all possibly relevant papers were contacted. In all searches inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. Of the twenty two papers included two were systematic reviews and twenty were case reports or case series. The twenty articles of case reports or case series exposed information from thirty-five clinical cases included. Despite the limitations of scientific evidence it can be concluded that oral cavity, head and neck regions are home to multiple and diverse injuries by maltreatment of children and youngsters."
- Medico-legal age estimation in a sub-adult portuguese population: validation of Atlas Schour and Massler and LondonPublication . Cesário, C.; Santos, R.; Pestana, D.; Pereira, Cristiana Palmela"Introduction: Age estimation in children and adolescents often depends on morphological methods, such as examination of dental development. Objectives: The aim of this project was to validate, in a Portuguese population, two forensic methods of dental age estimation – Schour and Massler charts and the London atlas. Materials and Methods: The test sample was composed by 108 dental radiographs of living and known-age individuals. Dental age was estimated according to each method. Chronological age was then compared to the estimated dental age using individual t-test and paired t-test. Results: Results showed that the Schour and Massler charts underestimated age and the London atlas overestimated age. Nevertheless, the London atlas performed better in all measures. Mean differences for both the London atlas and Schour and Massler were 0,1389 and -5,4167 months respectively. Schour and Massler charts showed significant statistical difference between dental age and chronological age (p <0.05). Discussion and Conclusions: We conclude that, in the evaluated sample, age estimation using the London atlas represents an improvement in forensic age estimation from developing teeth. Further studies should be done with a larger Portuguese population sample."
- The role of forensic dentistry for identification of a criminal sexual assault: a casework reportPublication . Pereira, Cristiana Palmela; Santos, Jorge Costa"The identification of an individual from dental traces collected at the crime scene is one of the objectives of the criminal investigation. When, at the crime scene, objects are found with tooth marks, the intervention of Forensic Dentistry may represent the only way to obtain positive identification of the author’s bite mark. The forensic analysis of a bite mark consists of detection, recognition, description and comparison of bite marks on either individuals or inanimate objects. In this medico-legal casework, a sexual assault, the victim of the crime presented to the forensic examination had a mark on her left arm consistent with a bite mark, probably from the aggressor during the crime perpetration. The protocol followed in this medico-legal casework study is a scientific analysis of the facts which when presented in the court will be defendable under ruthless cross-examination. The pattern association of dental features in this sexual abuse case demonstrated a degree of concordance present between the tooth marks in the victim’s body and the suspect´s dentition."