Journal of Dental Medicine

Background and Aim: Adenoids are normally large in children and their size starts to reduce during adolescence. Hypertrophic adenoids could be associated with allergic reactions. Enlarged adenoids result in nasal breathing difficulties and the child is forced to switch to mouth breathing. Airway obstruction causes postural alterations of jaw, tongue and head, and due to persistent obstruction, patient’s appearance changes to adenoid face. Evaluation of nasopharyngeal space in lateral cephalometic view is a simple and repeatable method for determination of the size and shape of adenoids and nasopharyngeal space which can provide a simple measurement of nasopharyngeal obstruction. The roof of nasopharyngeal space is covered by the sphenoid bone. Thus changes of nasorespiratory resistance by hypertrophic adenoids may affect the cranial base angles. In this study, the relationship between adenoid hypertrophy and cranial base angles was investigated.

Materials and Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, lateral cephalometric views of 7 to 14 y/o patients from the files of orthodontic centers in Rasht city were selected. The radiographs with proper resolution were separated for this research. Adenoid to nasorespiratory ratio (A/N Ratio) was determined by Fujioka method and categorized in three groups: A (A/N 0.8), B (0.5