RESUMEN
Objectives: To determine the prevalence of the different morphological variants and anatomical location variations and characteristics of maxillary labial frenum in Jordanian children
Methods: This descriptive study was conducted on randomly selected patients who attended the pediatric dental clinic at Prince Rashid Bin Al Hassan military hospital in the north of Jordan for dental treatment during July and August 2016. Collected data included gender, age, morphology and attachment location of the maxillary labial frenum. The morphology were classified using Sewer in classification and attachment location using Mirkoclassification
Results: Three hundred Jordanian patients were included in the study. Males [153] slightly outnumbered females [147]. The age ranged between 1.33 and 13.25 years with an average of 7.8 +/- 2.41 SD. Gingival attachment of maxillary labial frenum was the most common in both males and females [58%] followed by mucosal [27%], papillary [9.67%] and papillary penetrating type [5.33%]. Morphologically, simple variant was the most common [54.67%] followed by simple with module [25.67%], simple with appendix [9.67%], persistent tectolabial [4.33%], and other variants [less than 6%]. There was a significant correlation between the position of the maxillary labial frenum and the age of the child [-0.233]
Conclusion: Gingival frenal attachment was the most common and there was a significant statistical correlation between the age of the patient and the location of the maxillary labial frenum. The diversity of morphology of the maxillary labial frenum in healthy children urges the physicians to differentiate the normal from abnormal variant in order to avoid misdiagnosis and unnecessary surgical intervention