Lateral cephalometric standards of Germans with normal occlusion from 6 to 17 years of age

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze sagittal and vertical dentofacial dimensions in subjects with normal occlusions during the juvenile and adolescents age periods to establish age- and gender-specific lateral cephalometric standard values for Germans during their active growth period. The study group consisted of a sample of 32 untreated subjects with normal occlusions. Lateral cephalograms were analyzed at 11 consecutive stages, from 6-13 and from 15-17 years of age. A customized cephalometric analysis was used to measure 53 variables. Statistical comparisons of gender-specific differences were performed by means of Mann-Whitney U tests.Anterior and posterior cranial base lengths, midfacial length as well as mandibular length were recorded to be significantly larger in male subjects at the age of 6 years. For most of the linear measurements, significantly larger craniofacial distances were recorded in males from the age of 15 years onward. There were no statistically significant gender differences with regard to most angular measurements at subsequent age groups. Soft tissue analysis revealed flatter profiles in females than in males from the age of 10-11 years onward, while age-dependent changes in the soft tissue profile were similar in both genders.In untreated subjects with normal occlusion craniofacial development of the hard and soft tissues can be considered age- and gender-dependent. Therefore age- and gender-specific differences of linear craniofacial distances should be taken into account for diagnosis and treatment planning in children and adolescents. The present results can be used as reference values for children and adolescents of German origin.

Lateral Cephalometric Linear Measurement Standards of Mongolian Children with Normal Occlusion from 6-7 Years of Age

“…Recent studies have shown that cephalometric linear measurements increased with age, while angular measurements appeared more constant [13]. In the presence of a normal occlusion, the craniofacial complex grows continuously in a downward and anterior direction along the Downs facial axis, and this process is not gender-specific [14][15].…”

Extent of maxillary deficiency in patients with complete UCLP and BCLP

“…Trotman and Ross [25] found the same results in a group of patients with complete bilateral cleft lip and palate between 6 and 12 years and as grown-ups. They also observed a decrease of SNA as consequence of surgical procedures, since SNA undergoes a physiologic increase during growth in non-cleft patients [26]. …”

Longitudinal changes in the dental arches and soft tissue profile of untreated subjects with normal occlusion

“…Orthodontic clinicians and researches benefit from the existence of gender-and age-specific standard values for specific populations for several reasons [13]. Standard values are of great help in diagnostics and treatment planning, especially in growing children in whom alveolar and dental changes occur continuously [10,40].…”

“…Furthermore, assessment of treatment outcome is more accurate by comparing natural growth changes in untreated subjects with normal occlusion rather than with controls displaying different types of malocclusion [34]. Therefore, several studies were carried out in the past to investigate longitudinal dental changes in untreated children and adolescents [4,5,7,12,13,15,20,24,27,32,[34][35][36][38][39][40]. However, only a few of them have described dental and soft tissue changes from the deciduous to the permanent dentition [5,7,8,32,[38][39][40].…”

“…Selection criteria used for "standards" or "controls" in those studies are not uniform. They range from ideal occlusion [40] to good or acceptable occlusion [5,7,8,12,13,24,27,32,[34][35][36]39]. The inclusion criteria of the present study were rather strict [13,[17][18][19].…”