3/23/07

With more adults seeking orthodontic treatment, the Bolton-Brush Growth Studies Center at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine, Cleveland—one of the world’s longest-running projects on normal human growth—will begin to focus on establishing standards for what is considered normal adult development.

Taking the center into its future endeavors will be Mark G. Hans, DDS, MSD, chairman of the dental school’s orthodontics department. According to Hans, the next step for the center, which has tracked human development for the past 70 years, is to use cone-beam scanners to develop 3D, computerized craniofacial models. The new standard will be based on a composite of data collected from patients coming to the dental school for treatment.

The center has enlisted engineer Krishna Subramanyan, PhD, to design the program to establish the standards for what is normal at the age of 30, 40, 50, 60, and the following decades of life. They also plan to revise the childhood standards for male and female children from 3 to 18 years old. Developing standards for normal craniofacial development of African Americans and other ethnic groups will be part of the center’s new direction.
 
Hans notes that a patient in his or her 40s may not want that balance derived from a standard model for an 18-year-old, and would prefer a procedure to eliminate or reduce wrinkles and still allow animation in their facial features.
 
"As society becomes healthier, it is the quality of life that starts to
become more important for individual seeking orthodontic care," Hans says.
 
[Case Western Reserve University, March 20, 2007]