Perception of the esthetic impact of mandibular incisor extraction treatment on laypersons, dental professionals, and dental students

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the degree of perception of laypersons, dental professionals, and dental students regarding dental esthetics in cases with mandibular central incisor extraction. Materials and Methods: Using a smile photograph of a person with normal occlusion and all teeth, modifications were made to reflect the extraction of a mandibular incisor of various compositions and sizes. For this purpose a program specifically for image manipulation (Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Systems Inc) was used. After manipulation the images were printed on photographic paper, attached to a questionnaire and distributed to laypersons, dental professionals, and dental students (n 5 90) to evaluate the degree of perception and esthetic using a scale of attractiveness, where 0 5 hardly attractive, 5 5 attractive, and 10 5 very attractive. The differences between examiners were checked by the Mann-Whitney test. All the statistics were performed with a confidence level of 95%. Results: The results demonstrated the skill of the dental professionals and dental students in perceiving the difference between cases of normal occlusion and cases where an incisor was lacking (P , .05). The photograph in which the lateral incisors were shown to be larger than the central incisor was the one that obtained the highest value among the cases of extraction in all groups of evaluators. Conclusions: It can be concluded that dental professionals and dental students are more skillful at identifying deviation from normality. In addition, central incisor extraction should always be discarded when there are other treatment options available. (Angle Orthod. 2012;82:732-738.)

Esthetic perception of facial profile after treatment with the Thurow appliance

“…15,16 The results of this study indicate that the individuals who evaluated the silhouettes presented to them were capable of observing the differences existing among these images, as demonstrated by their assessment scores. Clinically, orthodontists diverge in regard to the use of photographs, silhouettes and cephalometric tracings to evaluate the esthetics of the facial profile.…”

Perception and expectation. What do patients really want from the dental treatment?

“…Dissatisfaction towards color was found to be the most significant to appearance satisfaction [8][9][10][11][12][13] . Older patients (≥ 50) were more likely to be satisfied with tooth color and patients ranging from 30 to 49 years had the highest percentage of dissatisfaction.…”

“…Aesthetic have become a very important factor 4 , in order to achieve the esthetic objectives the clinician must rely on a good treatment plan relying on several disciplines 6 . Several studies state that patients (layperson) are able to perceive subtle changes regarding esthetic and deviation from normality almost as much as dentists, but their concept of facial attractiveness may be different [8][9][10] . Besides it is important to know that Laypeople generally are not aware of their facial profile, and photograph exposure previous to treatment can increase patients' profile self-awareness.…”

Evaluation of black spaces between maxillary central incisors by dentistry students and laypeople

“…The photos obtained from the study of Pithon et al (5) were manipulated with the Photoshop program to create eight different sized black spaces in the frontal smile of a patient with complete dentition and neutral occlusion (7,12,14,18,20,(22)(23)(24)26,27). A photo album containing the manipulated photographs and a questionnaire was distributed to the study participants.…”