Morphological comparison of cervical vertebrae in adult females with different sagittal craniofacial patterns: A cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION: Cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) methods have gained popularity to assess growth and development status for orthodontic patients. Although craniofacial and craniocervical structures are known to be associated, there is no evidence in the literature if this relation might negatively affect the accuracy of CVM assessments. Therefore, this study aimed to comparatively investigate the sizes of the 2(nd), 3(rd), and 4(th) cervical vertebrae in adult females (radius union stage of skeletal maturity) who have different sagittal skeletal patterns. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted, and 151 lateral cephalometric radiographs of adult female patients were assessed in the study. Patients were assigned to three groups according to ANB angle. Parameters including concavity depth at the lower border of the 2(nd), 3(rd), and 4(th) cervical vertebrae and base length, upper border length, body length, posterior height, anterior height, and body height of the 3(rd) and 4(th) cervical vertebrae bodies were measured. One-way analysis of variance was used for between-group comparisons. RESULTS: No statistically significant differences were found between groups in terms of concavity depth at the lower borders of the 2(nd), 3(rd), and 4(th) cervical vertebrae (P > 0.05). Base length, upper border length, body length, posterior height, anterior height, and body height of the 3(rd) and 4(th) cervical vertebrae were also similar between groups (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study supports that sagittal craniofacial pattern has no effect on the accuracy of using the methods assessing CVM and calculating cervical vertebral age.