Features of Dental Anomaly Patterns in Finnish children as seen in panoramic radiographs at the late mixed stage

Abstract

Objective

To describe the prevalence of the developmental abnormalities involved in Dental Anomaly Patterns (DAP) and investigate their co-occurrence in an age cohort of children with late mixed dentition.

Material and Methods

Retrospective, register-based study focused on 1315 panoramic radiographs of children aged 8.5-10.5 years. The features examined were absent teeth, peg-shaped maxillary lateral incisor, delayed dental age, infraocclusion of primary molars, transposition and distal angulation of unerupted mandibular second premolar.

Results

Feature involved in DAP was detected in 29.8% of the children, most common being infraocclusion of primary molars (17.5%), followed by absent teeth (8.4%), delayed dental age (7.6%), distal angulation of unerupted mandibular second premolar (7.3%), peg-shaped maxillary lateral incisor (2.4%) and transposition (0.5%). Two DAP features occurred together in 4.7% of children, while three occurred in 0.7%. Infraocclusion (p=.040) and absent teeth (p=.001) occurred more commonly in girls. Phenotypic variations in maxillary lateral incisor more often occurred together (p=.004). Absent teeth, peg-shaped maxillary lateral incisor and delayed dental age more often occurred together (p<.01) as did transposition and absent teeth (p=.016).

Conclusion

Almost third of the children had dental developmental abnormalities involved in DAP. Absent teeth, peg-shaped lateral incisors and delayed dental age more often occurred together.

Keywords:

• Developing dentition
• human
• panoramic radiograph
• permanent tooth

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to the oral health care personnel at the Health Centre in the municipality of Lapinlahti for making this study possible. We would also like to thank Terhi Karjalainen (TK) for her work with data collection.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Finnish Dental Society Apollonia, the Päivikki and Sakari Sohlberg Foundation, and the University of Oulu Scholarship Foundation.