Evaluation of facial esthetics in long-faced white Brazilian middle school students.

Objective: This study aimed to determine orthodontists' and layperson's perceptions about facial esthetics in a long face pattern sample.

Methods: The sample consisted of 64 frontal photographs of white Brazilian middle school students (9-15 years old), diagnosed as long faced through morphologic evaluation and confirmed by the facial index. A Likert-type scale was used to determine orthodontists' (22) and laypeople's (22) perceptions about facial esthetics. Chi-square and proportions tests were used for comparison between the examiners regarding the classification in each degree of esthetics, adopting a significance level of 5%.

Results: For orthodontists and laypeople, most of the subjects were considered to have acceptable appearance: 36.4% and 40.3%, respectively. Subjects whose appearance was classified as unpleasant constituted one-third of the sample: for orthodontists, 7.8% very unpleasant and 22.9% unpleasant, and 6.7% and 22.2%, respectively, for laypeople. The facial structures most cited as responsible for unpleasantness were the lack of lip sealing followed by incisor exposition. The increase of the lower third of the face for orthodontists and eyes for laypeople were the third most cited unpleasant characteristics.

Conclusions: For the evaluators, two-thirds of the long face sample were considered to have an acceptable, pleasant, or very pleasant appearance. Laypeople's opinions aligned with the orthodontists', that one-third of long-face patients were considered to have an unpleasant appearance.