Correlation of Spheno-occipital synchondrosis maturation level with cervical vertebra maturation, wisdom tooth development and Chronologic age in Iranian population

Abstract

Background and Aims Understanding the biologic principles of growth and development, specially about craniofacial structures, is necessary to achieve proper results in orthodontics. The aim of this study was to assess the correlation between Cervical Vertebral Maturation (CVM), Third molar development, choronologic age and Spheno-Occipital Synchondrosis (SOS) fusion in Iranian population. Method and Material The population consisted of 134 patients between 7 and 21 years who had panoramic radiographs, lateral cephalometric radiographs and CBCT scans. Images were acquired with a maximum 3 months interval. For determining Cervical Vertebral Maturation (CVM) the method of Baccetti was used. Dental age was calculated from third molar tooth which was scored from A to H according to method of Demirjian on panoramic radiographs. A six-stage system of Yang et al. was used to assess the fusion degree of the Spheno-Occipital Synchondrosis (SOS). The results of this study were reported with descriptive statistical indexes and using SPSS version 16. For determining correlation, the Spearman and Chi-squared tests were used. A significance level of less than 0.05 was considered. Result The correlation coefficient (r) between SOS and chronologic age was 0.749 for females and 0.908 for males, correlation coefficient between SOS and CVM was 0.929 for females and 0.992 for males, it was 0.685 for females and 0.782 for males between SOS and Third molar development. Correlation coefficient between CVM and Third molar development was 0.681 for females and 0.801 for males. And correlation coefficient between CVM and chronologic age for females and males was 0.719 and 0.913, respectively. Correlation coefficient between Third molar development and chronologic age was 0.857 for females and 0.860 for males. Conclusion Based on results of this study, highest correlation was found between SOS fusion and CVM that shows good prediction value between these indexes. This result might offer a new approach for orthodontics to evaluate skeletal maturity by using Spheno-Occipital Synchondrosis from CBCT.