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ABSTRACT

Introduction: Esthetics have become a huge part of dental treatment especially when treating missing teeth slots in the anterior maxilla “esthetic zone”. Today, implant treatment is the main approach to treat missing teeth in the esthetic zone. The treatment result must fulfill functional and esthetical demands from the treating dentist, but mainly from the patient. Esthetic dental evaluation can be performed by using indices like: Pink Esthetic Score (PES) and White Esthetic Score (WES). Esthetics is not a specific subject in dental education, but every dentist has their own opinion about esthetics and one can wonder if the perception of esthetics will change with increased educational level.

Aim: To assess if increased dental educational level affects esthetic evaluation.

Methods: Two intraoral photographs with two different single implant-supported crowns were used. A combination of PES/WES were selected to assess an overall esthetic outcome. Each photograph illustrated the implant supported crown and the peri-implant soft tissue in the position of the central incisor. Specialists, general dentists and dental students were involved to esthetically evaluate these clinical photographs using PES and WES. Two Microsoft forms were sent to 70 participants with these photographs and PES/WES indices to perform esthetic evaluation.

Results: In total 44 participants answered the first form while 42 answered the second. No significant difference was found when comparing how the participants scored PES/WES.

Conclusion: The result from our study found no difference between different educational levels when evaluating the esthetics for implants in the esthetic zone.