Chronological age (CA) is not considered an accurate method for assessing the stage of physical or growth development of an individual in childhood or adolescence. For that reason, skeletal and dental maturation can be used in order to examine the rate of physical maturation of the population. Cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) method uses lateral cephalometric radiography to evaluate skeletal maturity. It is considered the preferable method due to its advantage of avoiding unnecessary extra radiation. The CVM method developed by Baccetti et al. (2005) depends on the morphology of the three cervical vertebrae (C2, C3, and C4), which divided skeletal growth into six stages of based on the morphology of the previously mentioned cervical vertebrae. The Demirjian method is considered as one of the most worldwide used method for assessment of the dental maturation due to its reliability. It depends on panoramic x-rays through which the dental developmental stage of 7 lower left teeth appears, and according to the gender of the patient the sum of values of the teeth will be transform to age through the standard tables of Carmen M. Nolla; 1960.
The aim of this research is to evaluate the skeletal and dental maturation of cleft lip and palate patients in a sample of Egyptian population using the CVM as indicator for the skeletal maturation and the Demirjian method as indicator for the dental one when compared to a group of Egyptian non-CLP subjects of the same age.