[Epidemiology of individual front tooth gaps in exiled Tamilians]

During the period from 1986 to 1993, 254 Tamilian patients were examined by the Department of Public Health at Wuppertal. These patients had come from Sri Lanka as refugees applying for political asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany. In more than 60% of the patients isolated front tooth gaps were observed, an incidence that was significantly higher than in a control group of asylum seekers from countries other than Sri Lanka, and much higher than the incidence of traumatic tooth loss reported in the literature. To the authors the aetiology of this tooth loss remains largely unexplained, since the bulk of the medical histories given by the patients did not correlate with clinical and x-ray evidence. Considering that medical and especially dental causes for the loss of the teeth can be excluded, social, cultural, religious, or even political causes may be responsible for this anomaly.