# Anthropometric vs. Dental Variables of the Ageing Face: A Clinical Study
## 4 Discussion  
The present study utilized two-dimensional digital photography to identify correlations between aesthetic facial parameters and factors such as sex and age. The facial anthropometric parameters for this study were chosen due to their wide use in everyday clinical practice, considering the effect of the ageing process on facial changes. Although profile characteristics such as height and weight presented statistically significant differences, BMI did not influence the parameters studied. It could be argued that the \(p\)-value (0.402) could be considered limited as the significance level was set at 0.05. A larger sample with wider ranges of weight and height could potentially show a statistically significant BMI difference. However, this was beyond the scope of this study as it excluded athletes, individuals with high muscle mass, to overcome the limitations of the technical equipment, the height of the tripod and camera. However, the participants' characteristics proved comparable, and the statistical approach adopted managed to highlight interesting variations between anthropometric and oral variables among different ages and sexes to monitor changes over time. Moreover, the euprosopic (a broad face and ovoid-shaped dental arch with a facial index of 80-85 [39; 40]) pattern was the dominant pattern as the average facial index in this study was within the normal range, and there were no statistically significant differences within age and sex. That the majority of the participants belonging to Angle class I (78%) was a finding in line with the pattern of the euprosopic sample, further revealing a larger lower third on average which was more prominent in men than the average of the middle third, which presented with higher values in females. It could be argued that a minor percentage (9%) of participants who belonged to Angle Class II had a facial index within the euprosopic range due to periodontal problems causing malocclusion since only 10% of the participants had healthy periodontal tissues. The marginal statistical significance found in overbite (\(p=0.05\)) between males and females enhances this finding as it potentially contributes to the labial flaring of teeth due to tongue movement. One could argue that this condition had an impact on certain participants' horizontal planes not being parallel to it, but this was not proven to be statistically significant, with a \(p\)-value of 0.08. The correlation of facial measurements with the progression of time underscores the impact of the complex ageing process, which evolves individually among subjects. In modern dentistry, treatment planning for cases that require prosthodonic restorations is based on anthropometric measurements conducted in young adults which do not necessarily reflect the age of the actual patient [41; 42; 43]. Furthermore, most studies in the field of anthropometry tend to involve sample groups consisting of young people, i.e., from 18 to 30 years old [44; 45; 46; 47; 48], and rarely involve individuals up to 45 years old [33; 49; 50]. The present clinical study recruited individuals as a consecutive sample regarding age, males and females of the same race and with comparable profile characteristics, ranging from 26 to 79 years old. It allowed for an examination of how facial features change over time, making it a valuable contribution to the field as it captured the early, middle and late stages of the progression of facial ageing. The fact that the distance between the pupil and the orbital point appears to shorten with age was an interesting finding of the present investigation. Changes in the distance between the eye pupil and the orbital point are of great importance for aesthetic and plastic interventions performed in this region to reduce wrinkles. Previous studies showed that the lower eyelid rises, and the orbital aperture widens with time [34; 51]. However, the latter is not in line with the results of our study.