Cephalometric analysis for assessing sagittal jaw relationship- A comparative study

Abstract

The successful treatment of Orthodontic patient is dependent on careful diagnosis. Three planes of discrepancies are commonly described in orthodontics namely, transverse, sagittal and vertical. Of these, the sagittal discrepancies are most commonly encountered in day to day practice. This study was aimed to compare various methods of cephalometric analysis for assessing sagittal jaw relationship. There were total of 180 lateral cephalograms used and each samples were divided into 2 groups based on their skeletal relationship according to ANB angle. i.e Class I and Class II. Class I and Class II were again divided into average, horizontal and vertical group. Pretreatment records were taken and tracing were performed on the lateral cephalogram and measured values were recorded and subjected to statistical analysis.In class I, the highest frequency was seen in A-B plane angle and FABA angle and in class II the highest frequency found in K angle followed by A-B plane angle. In class I horizontal group, a strong level of agreement was found between AXB angle with AF-BF distance while in class II average group, A-B plane angle shows strong level of agreement with WITS and FABA angle. In terms of reliability, all the ten parameters (A-B plane angle, WITS, AF-BF distance, APP-BPP distance, FABA angle, BETA angle, YEN angle, W angle and K angle) show good reliability in class II average and vertical group. : No single measurement is perfect in all the cases. A combination of different measurements should be used to have a true assessment of sagittal jaw relationship.