Correlation Between Maxillary Bone Thickness And Facial Height

Objectives:  The periodontal biotype has many related factors, such as facial bone thickness, teeth form and shape, and teeth inclination. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between anterior facial dimension height and buccal bone thickness of the anterior sextant in Caucasian population.

Methods:  120 subjects aged above 20 years old were selected for the cross-sectional study. The participants were composed of 65 men and 55 women, age range from 20 to 67 years old (average age, 36.7 years) The sample was selected from the preexisting records from the Department of Orthodontics, Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. All data was analyzed by cone beam computer homograph (CBCT) measurement. Multiple linear regression was used to evaluate correlation between ages, anterior facial dimension height and buccal bone thickness of the anterior sextant.

Results:  Correlation between anterior facial dimension height and buccal bone thickness of the anterior sextant was high. (p = 0.03) However, the correlation between ages and buccal bone thickness of the anterior sextant was low. (p = 0.89)

Conclusions: The result shows that, within the limits of the study, the anterior facial height proportion has negative correlation with buccal bone thickness sextant in Caucasian adult population. However, ages didn’t show significant correlation with buccal bone thickness. The limitations of this study include the inability to extrapolate to different racial populations. Future studies to evaluate different racial adult population are suggested for comparison.