COINCIDENCE OF FACIAL MIDLINE WITH DENTAL MIDLINE

The objective of the present study was to determine the role of facial mid line as a guide for positioning maxillary dental midline for Prosthodontic patients during fabrication of prosthesis. Furthermore the study will help in indicating character as well as perception of discrepancies between dental and facial midline among Pakistani population. The study was carried out within population of Baqai Medical University Karachi, Pakistan from Jan2013 to June 2013. A total of 500 dentate patients with the age range 18 to 30 years were selected randomly. No fixed proportion was proposed. The patients having permanent dentition from 2nd molar to 2nd molar in maxillary arch were included .However patients having midline diastema, orthodontic treatment, or any cranio-facial anomaly were excluded. The patients were observed to check if the maxillary dental midline coincides with the facial midline. The facial midline was examined by marking points between nasion till pognion including centre of philtrum with the help of scale or dental floss. The results of the present study showed that 82.8% patients had their maxillary dental midline coinciding with facial midline. Therefore it was concluded that the Facial midline can be taken as reliable guide in establishment of maxillary dental midline among Pakistani population Key Words: Facial midline, Facial feature detection, edentulous, Esthetics.