A study of incidence of palatal side abfractions in maxillary posterior teeth

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE@#Most of studies dealing with abfractions are limited to the buccal surfaces of the teeth. In this study, we analyzed the cause for abfraction by investigating the incidence of palatal side abfractions in maxillary posterior teeth.@*MATERIALS AND METHODS@#We investigated a total of 3193 maxillary posterior teeth by an intraoral examination, model observation, and observation of virtual model fabricated using model scanning. We recorded the results and classified them depending on the type of teeth, age, gender, and side of arches. We also performed Chi-square test to evaluate the statistical significance among the groups (α = 0.05).@*RESULTS@#The incidence of palatal side abfraction of the maxillary molars (10.8%) was higher than the premolars (6.8%), and among them, the incidence of the 1st molars (39.1%) were the highest. The incidence of palatal side abfraction increased with age and was statistically significant (P 0.05); in the case of arches, left arch showed higher incidence and it was statistically significant (P < 0.05).@*CONCLUSION@#Palatal side abfraction in maxillary posterior teeth was frequently observed in the maxillary 1st molars, and the incidence increased with age. This result suggests that the main reason for abfraction is due to occlusal force.