Dental cross-bite and gingival marginal recession. A cross-sectional study

Crossbite (CB) has been reported to be associated with Gingival Marginal Recession (GMR) especially in the anterior region. The current study aims to evaluate the association between GMR and CB both in anterior and posterior regions.

This was a cross-sectional study in a private dental clinic in Najran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia involving 120 medically healthy patients with CB, good to fair oral hygiene, non-severe gingival inflammation and without prosthesis. Socio-demographic data was obtained from the clinic records and diagnosis of cross-bite and GMR was made. The diagnosis of GMR was made with periodontal probe. Oral hygiene index (OHI) and Gingival index (GI) was also evaluated.

All the 120 cases of CB had at least 1 tooth with GMR. There were 55 (45.8%) males and 65 (54.2%) females with a M:F of 0.8:1. Age ranged from 11 to 50 years with Mean ± SD (21.78 ± 7.63). Age group < 30 years constitute the majority of the patients. The value of Odd's ratio (OR) is much higher than 1.0 in all the lower anteriors (41, 41, 43, 31, 32 and 33), and statistically significant as compared with much lesser OR values for some of the upper anteriors (21, 22 and 23). Similar findings was also observed in the posterior dentition. Females tend to have better OHI and GI than males with statistical significance in the GI only (p = 0.048).

Association between CB and GMR especially in the lower anterior and posterior dentition was observed.