Abstract
The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the effectiveness of Dental Aesthetic Index (DAI) in the assessment of malocclusion in Japanese. Plaster models obtained from 200 high school students aged 15 to 18 years were examined according to DAI. In addition, the agreement between Malalignment Index (MI), Occlusion Feature Index (OFI), Discrepancy Index (DI) and DAI in screening malocclusion was compared. The results were as follows : 1. Half of subjects had incisal crowding. The percentage of subjects with incisal spacing was 7%, and two thirds of them had diastema of 1 mm or more. The percentage of subjects with anterior irregularity on the upper and the lower arch was 83% and 68%, respectively. The percentage of subjects with anterior maxillary overjet and mandibular protrusion of 1 mm or more was 84% and 17%, respectively. About sixty percent of all subjects were mesial or distal to its normal relation. 2. There were differences among MI-TN, OFI-TN, DI-TN and DAI-TN groups as to which cases had malocclusion. These results suggest that the DAI is a more suitable screening tool in Japanese.
