Relationship between nasal and skeletal landmarks on lateral cephalograms of adults

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between cephalometric nasal soft tissue and skeletal landmarks in adults. Lateral cephalograms from Japanese adults (30 men: mean age, 24.5 ± 4.9 years; 30 women: mean age, 20.3 ± 3.3 years; overall mean age, 22.4 ± 2.4 years) were used in this study. Twenty-two skeletal points and three soft tissue nasal points were marked on each subject’s lateral cephalogram, and the coordinates of all the points were systematically digitised and transformed to a standardised plane. A forward stepwise regression analysis determined how combinations of the skeletal landmarks predict the location of the nasal soft tissue landmarks. Based on the result of our research, the location of the nasal soft tissue cephalometric landmarks in our adult subjects may be predicted based on skeletal landmarks, and different skeletal landmarks predicted the position of each soft tissue landmark in the adult males and females in this study.

Keywords:

• nasal soft tissue
• skeletal landmark
• lateral cephalograms
• sex difference
• prediction