Introduction and objective:

the analysis of the smile in the face of dental treatment is essential and must always take into account factors such as: age of the patient, anomalies in the size and shape of the teeth, face shape, lips, color, presence of diastema, dental midline deviations, between others. To investigate the possible influence of the deviation of the upper midline on the attractiveness of the smile in adolescents.

Materials and methods:

six frontal photographs in posed smile were selected from orthodontically treated adolescent volunteers who had an apparently normal occlusion and an upper dental midline coincident with facial and lower midline. Each real photograph was manipulated with the aid of Adobe Photoshop 7.0, in order to obtain photographs with an upper midline deviation of 1 to 4mm, totaling 30 photographs. Such images were analyzed by graduated dentists, dentistry students and lay adolescents, who classified them considering the aesthetics of the smile. To check the attractiveness of the smile, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for inter and intra-group evaluation, in addition to Pearson's correlation.

Results:

the groups of students and dentists showed a negative correlation between the deviation from the midline and the attractiveness of the smile (p ≤0.05). It was possible to observe that there was no statistically significant difference in the assessment made by lay adolescents, regardless of the degree of deviation from the midline.

Conclusion:

deviations from the upper midline impair the smile attractiveness when evaluated by people who are knowledgeable about the dental field.

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