Developmental Dental Anomalies Prevalence and Association with Medical Background.pdf

Developmental dental anomalies (DDA) may occur during various stages of the dental development. Their etiology is complex and can be associated with genetic inheritance, environmental exposures, systemic health disturbances and/or a combination of factors. DDA may affect individuals worldwide and are shown to have variation in prevalence in populations from different geographic areas. A number of DDA can be identified directly from a panoramic radiograph examination, while other types require comprehensive assessment, including clinical exam and adjunct diagnostic modalities. Pediatric dentists see children from an early age and may be the first oral health care professionals to encounter DDA in patients. Moreover, pediatric dentists are the specialists that are best placed to treat children with medical conditions and typically take a lot of referrals from primary dental providers.

This retrospective study aimed to describe the prevalence of radiographically identifiable types of DDA, including anomalies of number, size, shape, matrix development and root malformations in a large sample of pediatric patients from a university based dental clinic and to assess for associations between presence of DDA and patient medical status. Study data was obtained from the dental electronic health record (EHR) system, implemented for use in the clinics of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, College of Dentistry (COD), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The EHR system administrator generated a list of all patients under the age of 18 years old in the department that have had a panoramic radiograph (PR) taken in the three-year period from 01/01/2016 to 12/31/2018. The principal investigator (PI) accessed the EHR from this list and reviewed the associated PR to determine patient eligibility according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eligible patients were enrolled as study subjects and their demographic information (including age at time of PR exposure, sex, race, ethnicity), as well as any medical conditions/systemic disturbances were collected. The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification for physical status was used to determine the categorization of the subjects into two groups, healthy (ASA I) and those with existing systemic disturbance (ASA II and above). The participants PR were assessed for DDA and findings recorded in the study collection form. A second examiner evaluated PR determined to have DDA. Furthermore, clinical notes and additional available radiographs for those subjects were reviewed. Both study examiners had appropriate DDA training and were calibrated. Study data was numerically coded and analyzed using SPSS statistical software. A chi-square test and bivariate logistic regression was utilized (with a p-value of <0.05 used to determine statistical significance).