Jordan Journal of Dentistry

Perceptions of Altered Dental Aesthetics: Influence of ethnicity and time

Authors:

Iyad Al-Omari; Ahmad Hamdan; Zaid Al-Bitar;

Abstract:

Objective: The aims of this study were to assess perceptions of altered dental esthetics by Jordanian orthodontists, general dentists (GD) and laypeople (LP) and to compare them with the original data derived around a decade ago by Kokich et al. (2, 3) from an American sample.

Materials and Methods: Photographs of 8 symmetric and asymmetric altered anterior dental esthetics were used. Symmetric alterations were incisor angulations (IA), lip to gingiva distance (GS) and bilateral papillary height of the maxillary anterior teeth (BPH) while asymmetric alterations were midline (ML), crown length (CL), crown width (CW), crown width and length (WL) and papillary height (UPH).  Photographs were rated by a sample orthodontists, GD and LP. Raters were also asked to rank different dentofacial features according to their esthetics focus.

Results: Thresholds for detection of  IA, GS, and WL alterations were similar in all groups. However, orthodontists had the lowest detection threshold for ML. Orthodontists and LP had lower thresholds for BPH and UPH than GDs. However, CL and CW thresholds were lower for orthodontists and GDs. The most noticeable dentofacial feature was tooth position for orthodontists and eye color for GDs and LP.

Conclusions: Orthodontists were more sensitive to deviations than general dentists and laypeople irrespective of their ethnic and cultural background. Jordanian raters were more sensitive to deviations of the midline, gingiva to lip distance and unilateral papillary height from ideal. Jordanian raters were generally more critical of discrepancies compared to their American counterparts. 

Keywords:

perception, smile esthetics, laypeople, professional dentist and orthodontists: