Craniofacial morphology and tooth wear: a longitudinal study of orthodontic patients

Previous research has suggested that a relationship exists between craniofacial morphology and tooth wear. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether an individual's craniofacial morphology during childhood is related to the degree of tooth wear that occurs in that same individual's adult dentition. Pretreatment orthodontic records taken during the mixed dentition (T1) and follow-up records taken an average of 20 years later (T2) were available for 165 orthodontic patients. Incisal/occlusal tooth wear was measured on a tooth-by-tooth basis from T1 and T2 casts using a four-category scoring system. Measures of craniofacial morphology were made from the T1 lateral cephalometric radiograph. Multiple regression analysis indicated that adult wear was associated with the T1 cephalometric measures of ANB (p = 0.017) and the interaction between ramal height and sex (p = 0.039). These results suggest that the craniofacial morphology observed during childhood has a small but significant relationship to adult tooth wear.