Fig. 6. Position of the right mental foramen
Fig. 5. Position of the left mental foramen
Fig. 4. Left (l) and right (r) mandibular bone thickness (bt) in the four age groups (group 1, 0–20 years old; group 2, 21–40 years old; group 3, 41–60 years old; group 4, 61 and older) in men (0) and women [1]
Fig. 3. Left (l) and right (r) mandibular bone thickness in all patients
Fig. 2. Definition of the position of the mental foramen
Fig. 1. Measurement of mandibular bone thickness, defined as the distance between the lateral wall of the mandibular canal and the lateral mandibular compact bone (solid turquoise line)
 Age groupTotal1234SexMale41363930146Female44513538168Total 85877468314Table 1 Number of men and women in each age group (group 1, 0–20 years old; group 2, 21–40 years old; group 3, 41–60 years old; group 4, 61 and older)
Valdec, S., Borm, J.M., Casparis, S. et al. Vestibular bone thickness of the mandible in relation to the mandibular canal—a retrospective CBCT-based study.
Int J Implant Dent 5, 37 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40729-019-0189-z
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Received: 04 June 2019
Accepted: 30 September 2019
Published: 15 November 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40729-019-0189...
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Silvio Valdec and Jan Borm are equally contributing first authors.
The study was approved by the cantonal ethics committee of the canton of Zurich (KEK 2018-01691).
Not applicable.
Silvio Valdec, Jan Borm, Stephanie Casparis, Georg Damerau, Michael Locher and Bernd Stadlinger declare that they have no competing interests.
Silvio Valdec and Jan M. Borm contributed equally to this work.
Clinic of Cranio-Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery, Centre for Dental Medicine, University of Zurich, Plattenstrasse 11, 8032, Zurich, Switzerland
Silvio Valdec, Jan M. Borm, Stephanie Casparis, Georg Damerau, Michael Locher & Bernd Stadlinger
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This study was conducted without external funding.
The authors thank Jacquie Klesing, Board-Certified Editor in the Life Sciences (ELS), for editing assistance with the manuscript. Further, we thank Malgorzata Roos for supporting the statistical analysis.
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Bone thickness
Cone-beam computed tomography
Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine
Inferior alveolar nerve
The original datasets supporting the findings are available.
The results of this study support the relevance of a preoperative CBCT to allow detailed planning of a surgical intervention that may potentially touch the area of the mandibular canal. This applies to surgical procedures like wisdom tooth removal, root resection, implant placement and bone block harvesting. A CBCT allows the exact determination of the horizontal bone thickness vestibular to the I...
In a study comparing measurements between cadavers and CT images, the distance between the upper edge of the mandibular canal and the alveolar ridge showed possible over- and underestimations. The quantification showed a possible overestimation of up to 1.05 mm and a possible underestimation of up to 1.36 mm [34]. This discrepancy is of relevance in preoperative planning. Intraoperatively, a r...
The IAN is an important anatomical structure whose course affects the preoperative planning of a bone graft or implant insertion in the mandible. Knowledge on the bone thickness between the lateral wall of the mandibular canal and the lateral mandibular compact bone as well as of the position of the mental foramen facilitates decision-making [24]. Furthermore, for many other surgical procedures, t...
The median age of the patients was 40.2 years (range 12.6–84.4 years). Patients were distributed almost evenly across the age groups (see Table 1).
Figure 3 clearly shows the median vestibular bone thicknesses (bt) at 2-mm intervals throughout the anterior to posterior course of the canal on both the right (bt2 r to bt66 r) and left (bt2 l to bt66 l) side of the mandible. The maximum di...
In addition, the position of the mental foramen was determined relative to the roots of the neighbouring teeth. This was assessed by defining regions of interest in the area of the first premolar, second premolar and first molar by extending the respective mesial and distal points of the cement-enamel junction caudally along the tooth axis. The position of the midpoint of the mental foramen was th...
Three hundred fourteen cone-beam computed tomograms (CBCTs) from 168 (53.5%) females and 146 (46.5%) males from the database of the Department of Cranio-Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery, Center of Dental Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland, from the years 2008 to 2013 were analysed. Patients were divided into 4 age groups: group 1 = 0–20 years, group 2 = 21–40 years, group 3â...
The mandibular canal is a bilateral, intraosseous opening through which the IAN runs from the mandibular foramen to the mental foramen. The nerve innervates the teeth, the mucous membranes in the area of the mental foramen and the skin around the chin [14, 15]. Anatomical variations of the mandibular canal, such as bifid canals and an anterior loop of the mental nerve, are common [16, 17] and have...
When performing any kind of surgical procedure, a surgeon needs to be familiar with the possible variations in the anatomical configurations of both the mandibular canal and inferior alveolar nerve (IAN) [1,2,3]. This is particularly the case when performing root resections, removing wisdom teeth or harvesting autologous bone grafts.
Different techniques are described for reconstruction of missin...