Cephalometric evaluation of adenoids and upper airway

Cephalometric analysis performed on lateral X-ray allow orthodontists to evaluate soft tissues as well. Enlargement of adenoids, changes of the position of the tongue can be diagnosed parallel with skeletal assessment.
Our purpose was to investigate the skeletal growth direction and the posterior airway depth in mouth breather patients and to underline the importance of a complex cephalometric analysis prior orthodontic treatment.
30 mouth breather patients were selected from our database (17 boys and 13 girls, age 10.8±1.2), in every case ENT examination confirmed the hypertrophy of adenoids. From the same database 30 patients with normal breathing pattern (17 boys and 13 girls, age 11.1±0.9) for the control group. For every patient, the size of the adenoids, the depth of the palate and the position of the tongue. After filtering out the outliers in GraphPad-InStat system, standard deviation (±SD) was calculated, descriptive analytical statistics were performed.
Statistically significant differences were recorded regarding: 1.) the distance between adenoid vegetation and the palate (p=0.014, mouth breathers mean 9.76 ± SD 3.04; control group mean 14.38 ± SD 4.41), 2.) the distance between Sella and the adenoids (p=0.186, study group mean 33.39 ± SD 4.39; control group mean 28.38 ± SD 8.91), 3.) adenoidal-nasopharyngeal ratio (p = 0.05).
Cephalometric evaluation of adenoids revealed considerable enlargement of this in mouth-breather children, meanwhile upper airway constriction will appear in the same group. Depth of the palatum will increase when breathing pattern is modified.