Comparison of various anthropometric measurements for determining occlusal vertical dimension

Even though many different methods have been introduced for determining occlusal vertical dimension, evaluation of freeway space, closest speaking space and the use of anthropometric measurements are commonly accepted and widely used techniques in clinical practice. There are considerable number of anthropometric studies carried out on different populations however, these studies have evaluated a limited number of parameters. Therefore, the aim of this study is to decipher the proportional relations by determining all possible relationships between all facial and hand measurements that are reported in the literature to present a correlation and assumed to have a relation with occlusal vertical dimension. Our study has been carried out with 271 subjects amongst who were 136 females (30.37±8.09) and 135 males (30.42±8.49). For each subject, a total of 36 measurements as 4 occlusal vertical dimension, 24 facial and 8 hand measurements were taken. Subnasale – Pogonion, Subnasale – Base of the Chin, Tip of the Nose – Pogonion, Tip of the Nose – Base of the Chin measurements, as mentioned in the literature, were taken as reference for determining occlusal vertical dimension. Measurements were directly taken from soft tissue landmarks on subjects by using 4 digital vernier calipers (Accud, Accud Co., China) each of which was designed for different purposes. The fit of parameters on normal distribution has been investigated with Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro Wilks tests and inter-parameter relations with Pearson Correlation Analysis. Simple and multivariate linear regression analysis was used for multivariate analysis. Correlation levels were classified as Strong (r≥0.6), Moderate (0.6>r>0.3) and Weak (r ≤0.3) and regression formulas were established for parameters presenting strong correlation levels. As a result, the most, strong level correlation with occlusal vertical dimension measurements were subnasale – base of the chin and subnasale – pogoninon measurements. When the distance between pupil of right eye and commissure of the mouth, the distance between inter-lip line and pogonion, the distance between outer cantus of the right eye and the commissure of the mouth and the distance between sellion and the lower vermillion line of the lower lip measurements showed the best level of correlation with all occlusal vertical dimension measurements among all facial measurements, the width between the initiation edges of index and little fingers, the width between the tips of index and little fingers and the length of the thumb showed the highest correlation among hand measurements.