Abstract

Objective: To investigate if there is any relationship between palataly impacted canines and missing or anomalous lateral incisors as well as maxillary arch widths.

Methodology: The materials for this study comprised of orthodontic records including orthopantomographs and dental casts of patients visiting the Dental OPD of Bahria University Medical and Dental College. The sample size was 60 and was divided into 30 experimental subjects and 30 control subjects. The experimental group comprised of subjects having palatal canine impaction while the control group included subjects without palatal impactions. The presence of impacted canines was confirmed on OPG, their palatal presence was checked with horizontal parallax using an additional periapical radiograph. Dental casts were used not only to assess anomalies/ or absence of lateral incisors but also for measuring maxillary width from interpremolar and inter moalr distance. Data was analyzed using SPSS software. Co-relation between incisor anomaly or absence with impaction was checked using fisher exact test. To see the significance of intermolar and interpremolar widths (mm) between case and controls, independent sample t test was applied.

Result: Subjects with palatal canines had a weak association with anomalous and absent lateral incisors as 83% of experimental subjects and 93% of control subjects had normal lateral incisors. Maxillary width taken from inter-molar and inter-premolar distance, also had similar values between the experimental subjects and controls.

Conclusion: There was no association between palataly impacted canines with absent and anomalous incisors nor with maxillary skeletal width.

Key words: Palatal impactions, Maxillary arch width, Lateral incisor anomalies