Perception of Professional Female College Students Towards Smile arc Types and Outlook about their Appearance

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is to assess the perception of female students about the type of smile arc as well as their outlook about different parameters of esthetics. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A study was conducted among female students of King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia. One section of the questionnaire contained pictures having three types of smile arc wherein the respondents had to select any response ranging from 1 to 4 (1 for beautiful, 2 for good, 3 for average, and 4 for poor); besides it included 12 questions regarding the viewpoints of respondents about their smile and dental esthetics. The collected data were analyzed using the statistical package for social services version 16.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA, 2001). RESULTS: The dental students accounted for least mean score of 1.807 ± 0.8174 for consonant smile arc while it was 2.692 ± 0.8053 and 2.235 ± 0.9074 for information technology (IT) and medical students, respectively. When the individuals were asked whether they had a pleasant smile or not; only 53.8% of the dental students, 76.9% of the IT students, and 66.7% of the medical students responded positively. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that most of the female dental students were able to identify the consonant smile arc as being more beautiful than the flat and reverse smile arcs whereas lesser medical and IT students could perceive the smile arcs in the same manner. It was also observed that almost all the study participants were quite conscious about their smile attractiveness and dental esthetics.