Secular trends in malocclusion in Austrian men.

A comparison between occlusal deviations in the permanent dentition in the skulls of 94 19th century and 157 present-day Austrian males was made by means of the PAR Index. It was found that the contemporary dentitions showed significantly higher malocclusion scores than the 19th century sample (weighted PAR Index 11.79 and 6.62, respectively). The results show that secular changes in malocclusion have occurred during the last 100 years.