Proportion of maxillary vertical excess in dental patients visiting the Children's Hospital Lahore

The purpose of this study was to find the proportion of maxillary vertical excess in patients visiting orthodontic department of The Children Hospital and The Institute of Child Health Lahore, and male to female ratio among the maxillary vertical excess cases. The material for the study consisted of 100 lateral cephalograms of subjects visiting the department of Orthodontics, The Children Hospital Lahore. There were 50 males and 50 females in the study sample. The mean age of the whole sample was 12.93 +/- .956 years with the range of 12 to 15 years. Lateral cephalograms of all subjects were taken in centric occlusion. The same operator traced all the cephalograms on acetate matt paper manually. Cephalometric parameters included three skeletal angular and three skeletal linear measurements. Two ratios including Jaraback and lower anterior facial were also evaluated. 25 cephalograms were retraced to eliminate error of method. The vertical excess subjects showed significantly increased values of < SN/MP, MMA and sum of posterior [inner] angles when compared to normal subjects. The Jaraback ratio was small indicating greater value of total anterior facial height [TAFH] of the vertical excess subjects. The value of lower anterior facial ratio was greater than normal indicating greater lower anterior facial height [LAFH] in vertical excess subjects. Numerical data was statistically analyzed using paired t-test [SPSS version 10]. The results showed thirty three cases of maxillary vertical excess and eleven cases of maxillary vertical deficiency in the study sample. Among the maxillary vertical excess cases 19 were males and 14 females