Effects of malalignment of teeth in the anterior segments on plaque accumulation

The importance of malposition of teeth and plaque accumulation is still not established. The purpose of this study was to measure plaque accumulation on individual malpositioned teeth for comparison with contralateral nonmalpositioned teeth. Furthermore, the distribution of plaque in the anterior segments was measured and compared between aligned and nonaligned segments and the total mouth plaque score. Plaque scores and contact point indices were recorded from a total of 87 subjects of which 20 were drawn from dental and ancillary students and 67 from randomly chosen patients. For anterior teeth, in both groups significantly more plaque accumulated on malpositioned teeth compared with contralateral nonmalpositioned teeth. For the right-handed subjects (83), mean plaque scores for malpositioned teeth were greater than for nonmalpositioned teeth whether the malpositioned tooth was on the right or left of the anterior segment. This difference was significant in the patient group. The contact point index of the anterior segments correlated only with plaque accumulation in those subjects with a plaque index of less than 1. Upper and lower anterior segment plaque scores correlated with total mouth scores in both groups. However, the upper anterior segment scores had significantly less plaque than the total mouth score irrespective of the presence or absence of tooth malalignment, whereas the lower anterior segment always had significantly higher plaque scores than the total mouth score, irrespective of the presence or absence of malalignment. Finally, lower segments, whether aligned or malaligned, had significantly more plaque than upper anterior segments which were aligned or malaligned.