Clinical Observations of Dental Conditions at the Annual Family Conference

December 2007
By Clark Stanford, DDS, PhD, University of Iowa

During the annual Family Conferences, families have been involved in two research projects during the Friday research day. The first is an ongoing assessment of the dental conditions that the children or young adults present with. This is a time when parent often come with multiple questions and time is spent discussing what the current and future possibilities of care can be. The dental exams are typically visual observations of conditions and many times, we try to have dental students or residents from near by dental schools attend these consultation sessions.

This year, we were in Woodland Hill, California. Dr. George Cho, the resident director for University of Southern California brought 20 residents to observe the four specialist dentists providing consultations with each family. This was a unique learning experience! The dentists at this year’s session were Drs. Clark Stanford (University Iowa), Frank Farrington (Medical College of Virginia), Leonard Lausten (University of Missouri at Kansas City) and Tim Wright (University of North Carolina). The four specialists were able to provide consultations on a range of conditions from pediatric dental and genetic issues to complex restorative therapies and implant treatment.

We sincerely thank all of the families that participated in this study this year in California and over the past few years in St. Louis and Kansas City.

Our results show that we had 71 folks with various forms of ED come to the conference. We compared the presence of teeth in the mouth and observed four groups based on the subject’s age.

In group one who were from 1 to 1.8 years of age (9 subjects), there was a 16% reduction of primary teeth from those expected in this age range. In group two which were 2 – 4 years of age (24 subjects), there was a 55% reduction; in Group three which were 6 – 12 year of age (22 subjects) there was a 70% reduction in primary teeth and 29% reduction in permanent teeth; and finally, in Group four who were 15-49 years of age (13 subjects) there were eight subjects who retained some baby teeth with a 27% reduction in the number of teeth in the permanent dentition.

It was interesting to find that of the 71 subjects, 34 had some type of denture, with the 1st denture being provided at the average age of 5 years. Four of the subjects (18 – 37 years) had implant–supported dentures. We observed an interesting common pattern of missing premolars (“bicuspids”), upper jaw lateral incisors and lower jaw incisors.

Our conclusions to date suggest that folks affected with various forms of ED can expect to be missing from one-third to one-half of the expected number of teeth. We are using this information to help provide better insights into diagnosis and treatment planning for affected individuals and to help with the timing of various prosthetic treatments such as denture or implants.

Read More Articles