Overall dental maturity was studied semilongitudinally in a group of 248 healthy children born in Helsinki in 1968-73. In all, 738 orthopantomograms were taken of these children at ages of 2.5-16.5 years. Overall dental maturity was estimated by the method of Demirjian and Goldstein, which is based on the development of seven left mandibular permanent teeth. The aim of the study was to construct dental maturity curves for Finnish children and to compare their dental maturity with that of French-Canadian children studied by the same method. The Finnish children were more advanced in dental maturation than French-Canadian children (p less than 0.01). In boys the advancement was seen at the age of 5-10 years and in girls at the age of 4-12 years. These findings suggest differences in overall dental maturity among white population groups.

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In a material of 89 wide clefts, we measured the effect of the lip adhesion on the width of the cleft, the deviation of the maxillary arch segments, and in bilateral clefts on the premaxillary protrusion. The width of the unilateral complete cleft diminished by two-thirds, on average, depending upon decreasing positive deviation of the major alveolar segment, while the minor segment did not react at all. In unilateral alveolar clefts the effect was in principle similar. In bilateral complete clefts the width of the cleft diminished by only 40-50%, on the average, and the protrusion of the premaxilla by 8-23%, while the primarily always negative segmental deviation decreased by about 40%. The age at operation within certain limits did not seem to influence the results in any significant way. Lip adhesion is thus recommended especially in wide unilateral complete clefts as an operative orthodontic procedure to facilitate subsequent final repair.