Skip Navigation



The European Journal of Orthodontics Advance Access published online on April 28, 2006
The European Journal of Orthodontics, doi:10.1093/ejo/cji112
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (Rapid PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
28/3/269    most recent
cji112v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bernabé, E.
Right arrow Articles by Flores-Mir, C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bernabé, E.
Right arrow Articles by Flores-Mir, C.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Orthodontics Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Article

Estimating arch length discrepancy through Little's Irregularity Index for epidemiological use

Eduardo Bernabé 1 and Carlos Flores-Mir 2 *

1 Department of Social Dentistry, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
2 Department of Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Carlos Flores-Mir, E-mail: carlosflores{at}ualberta.ca


  Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic capability of Little's Irregularity Index (LII) in order to estimate the arch length discrepancy (ALD) in a dental arch. Dental casts with a full permanent dentition, excluding third molars, from 200 12- to-16-year-old schoolchildren from a representative high school located in Lima, Peru, were used. Incisal irregularity was measured using the LII, whereas ALD was calculated as the difference between available and required space in each dental arch anterior to the first permanent molars. The receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve was used to contrast the LII with three different dichotomized ALDs and locate optimized cut-off points.

Correlation between ALD and LII was -0.68 (P < 0.001). According to ROC curves, LIIs of 2.45, 4.00, and 4.55 mm were the optimized cut-off points to estimate negative ALDs higher than 0, 3, and 6 mm, respectively. LII's highest diagnostic capability was found for estimating negative ALD greater than 3 mm with a sensibility of 0.78 and a specificity of 0.76.

Based on the present findings, LII could potentially be used in epidemiological surveys as a valid and less time-consuming measurement of crowding compared with ALD; however, further studies are needed to test the reliability of this approach in field settings.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.