Buccal Corridors: A Fact or a Myth in the Eyes of Laymen?

This study aimed to investigate laymen knowledge of the existence of the buccal corridor and whether it was an important factor for them in judging smile attractiveness and the effect of introducing the knowledge to them on their further judgment.

Nine subjects were randomly selected with variable buccal corridor percentages. They were coached to smile in a posed fashion and full face smile photographs were taken from a standardised distance. The photographs were randomly arranged in a power point presentation and displayed to a panel of thirty-nine randomly selected laymen judges. The judges made their beauty judgment on a visual analogue scale (VAS) and filled a questionnaire. After their education about the buccal corridor, they were asked to make a second judgment on a second sheet with VAS and with a different random sequence of the photographs.

Intra-class correlation agreement for all the judges between the first and second scores was 0.713. The Spearman's rho Correlation coefficient indicated a positive correlation for all the photos. For the male judges, the agreement between the ratings was 0.839, and the correlation was positive for all the photos. For the female judges, the agreement between the ratings was 0.510, and the correlation was positive for all the photographs. Hundred percent of the judges were not familiar with the buccal corridor. Eighty percent of the female judges and 44.4% of the male judges mentioned that it would affect their further judgment.

Laymen build their esthetic judgments on what we teach them, and modifying treatment plans to include corrections of buccal corridors for esthetic reasons only is a myth.