Dental and Skeletal Age in Patients with Palatally Displaced Canines

To determine potential associations between dental and skeletal maturation and palatally displaced canines (PDC) considering gender and chronological age.

This study included pretreatment panoramic and lateral cephalometric radiographs of 43 subjects with PDCs and 203 randomly selected orthodontic subjects with normally erupted canines. Both groups were non syndromic patients. Chronological age of subjects was rounded and noted in years with decimal points and compared with chronological age according to Demirjian's dental age assessment. Skeletal maturation was determined by cervical vertebrae changes on cephalometric radiographs.

Female subjects with PDC were more affected by left side canine displacement than males (p=0.027) with five times higher odds ratio (OR = 4.9; 95% CIL=1.2-19.7). A comparison of chronologic and skeletal age indicated that PDC subjects were skeletally younger than unaffected groups with statistically significant differences at the age of 10, 12 and 13. (p=0.05).

Young subjects with PDCs showed skeletal maturation delay compared to control group, indicating that skeletal maturation assessment could be one of unexplored predicting factors of a PDC, especially at the age between 10 and 13 years in both genders. Subjects with PDC showed intensive growth spurt after the age of 12 years in females, and after the age of 13 in males. Dental maturation delay showed no statistical significance in PDC prediction.