Cephalometric characteristics of children and adolescents from the Eastern Rhodope region - Bulgaria

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the age dynamics and specificity of the developmental processes of head features in children and adolescents from the region of Eastern Rhodope. To achieve this goal we used transversal data collected for 1481 children and adolescents. 8 head and facial features were measured by the classical methodology of Martin-Saller (1957). Based on the directly recorded features, four indices were calculated. It is a peculiarity of the postnatal growth of all cephalometric features that growth curves are not intersected. Results show that boys have higher dimensions of the features that characterize the cranial and facial parts of the head than those of girls. The dimensions of the cranial part are ahead in its development in comparison to the dimensions of the facial part of the head, as it was observed in both sexes. In both boys and girls, the width cephalometric features complete their growth earlier than the height features. The shape of the head in the children and adolescents under observation is from the category 'mesocephalic', and wider facial shapes dominate in both sexes.