Introduction: There are various methods to evaluate the developmental status of a patient. But still  the hand wrist and cervical vertebral maturity remains the standard for the evaluation of skeletal maturity.The aims of this study were to evaluate the association between frontal sinus morphology and cervical vertebral maturation for the assessment of skeletal maturity.

Methods: A study was performed on the pretreatment lateral cephalograms of 30 subjects aged 8 to 21 years. The sample was divided into 6 groups based on the cervical vertebral maturation stages. The frontal sinus index was calculated by dividing the frontal sinus height and width, and the cervical stages were evaluated on the same radiograph. The Kruskal-Wallis test was applied to compare frontal sinus index values at different cervical stages, and the post hoc Dunnett T3 test was applied to compare frontal sinus index values between adjacent cervical stages for each sex. A P value of #0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: The height and width of the frontal sinus were significantly larger in the male subjects than in the females. A significant association was found between the frontal sinus height and width and cervical stages (P #0.001) in both sexes. Similarly, a weak negative correlation was found between the sinus index and the cervical stages in male subjects), whereas no correlation was found in female subjects. However, the post hoc analysis showed that the values of the sinus index were comparable between any 2 adjacent cervical stages.

Conclusions: The frontal sinus index could not differentiate between the pre pubertal, pubertal and postpubertal stages. Therefore, it cannot be used as a reliable maturity indicator.

Keywords:  lateral cephalogram, frontal sinus, cervical vertebral stages

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