The Prevalence of Mesioangular Impacted Lower Third Molar Among Patients Attending the Polyclinic, Faculty of Dentistry, IIUM.

Tooth impaction is failure of a tooth to erupt into its normal functioning positions within the expected time. It is a condition in which the unerupted or partially erupted tooth is positioned against another tooth, bone, or soft tissue so that complete eruption is unlikely.1 To study the prevalence of mesioangular impacted mandibular third molar using Orthopanthomograph (OPG) among patients attending Polyclinic, Faculty of Dentistry, IIUM Kuantan Campus. A cross sectional retrospective study on Orthopanthomographic radiographs which were taken from April 2009 until April 2012. OPGs with impacted mandibular third molar were collected and classified according to Winter’s classification; and the angulation measured by Padhye, M. N. et al. (2003) method using Planmeca Romexis software. Then, the position of the mesioangular impaction was further classified using Pell and Gregory classification. Among total 1177 cases of impacted mandibular third molar, 38.1% cases were mesioangular impaction, 34.3% cases were vertical impaction, 18.4% cases were horizontal impaction and 9.3% cases were distoangular impaction. Out of 448 OPGs with mesioangular impaction, 244 were female patients and 204 were male patients. Mesioangular impaction was mostly seen in 20-30 age group. Among the 448 cases of mesioangular impaction, race distribution were91.9% Malay, 4.7% Chinese and 3.4% from other races. In term of Pell and Gregory classification, Class IA, IB, IC, IIA, IIB, IIC, IIIA, IIIB and IIIC were 28.1%, 7.4%, 2.2%, 17.4%,29 %,6%, 3.8 %,2.5%,3.6 % respectively. There was no significant difference in gender and race (p > 0.05). The study indicated that the proportion of mesioangular mandibular third molar impaction was the highest among other types of impaction. Among the mesioangular impaction, Class IIB was the highest followed by IA, IIA, IB, IIC, IIIA, IIIC, IIIB, and IC. Although age influence was seen significantly among different classes of mesioangular impaction, no racial and gender influence was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]