Objective: To investigate the appropriateness of using changes in angular measurements to reflect the actually profile changes.
Methods: The sample consists of 48 growing malocclusion patients, contained 24 Class I and 24 Class II subjects, treated by an experienced orthodontist using Edgewise technique. Landmark and superimpositional data were extracted from the previously prepared numerical database. Three pairs of angular and linear measures were computed by the Craniofacial Software Package.
Results: Although the associations between all three angular measures and their corresponding linear measures are statistically significant at the 0.001 level, the disagreement between these three pairs of measures are 10.4%, 22.9% and 37.5% respectively in this sample.
Conclusions: The direction of displacement of anterior facial landmarks during growth and treatment cannot reliably be inferred merely from changes in cephalometric Angles.