Coincidence of Dental Midline with Facial Midline in a Sample of Pakistani Population

Objective: To determine the frequency of coincidence of facial and dental midlines in a sample of Pakistani subjects. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Prosthodontics, Fatima Jinnah Dental College and Hospital, Karachi, from October to December 2017. Methodology: Subjects of either gender (n=117) were selected from pool of otherwise healthy dental students. Facial portrait photographs using a DSLR camera were obtained while keeping the teeth in maximum inter-cuspation position. Auto-CAD software was used to analyse the coincidence of facial, maxillary and mandibular midlines. SPSS Version 23.0 was used for data analysis. The coincidence of the midlines were determined using Pearson correlation test. Level of significance was set at 0.05. Results: The coincidence of maxilla-mandible midlines was 64.1% (75/117); whereas, coincidence of facial midline with maxillary and mandibular midlines were 47.9% (56/117) and 46.1% (54/117), respectively. Left sided deviations of dental midlines were more frequent than the right side. Conclusion: The coincidence of inter-maxillary midlines was seen in two-thirds of the participants only. The dental midlines were coincident with the facial midline in less than half of the sample.