Morphological Characteristics of the Double Mental Foramen and Its Relevance in Clinical Practice: An Observational Study

Abstract

The mental foramen (MF) is an opening found bilaterally on the anterolateral aspect of the mandible; it can be round or oval and have different diameters. One of the anatomical variants of the jaw is the presence of an accessory mental foramen (AMF). These are usually smaller than the MF and can be located above, below, or to the sides of the main MF. The objective of this study was to recognize the presence of AMF in dry jaws of the Chilean population and collect information about its clinical relevance reported in the literature. In this descriptive observational study, we have collected dried jaws obtained from three higher education institutions in Santiago de Chile, from the Department of Morphology of the Andrés Bello University, the Normal Human Anatomy Unit of the University of Santiago, and the Human Anatomy pavilion from the Faculty of Medicine of the Finis Terrae University. The samples for this research were obtained by convenience, and the observation of the jaws was carried out in the human anatomy laboratories of each institution by three evaluators independently, and a fourth evaluator was included to validate that each evaluation was correct. The sample for this research came from 260 dry jaws, showing the following findings from the total jaws studied, and to classify as an accessory MF, it will be examined and measured so that it complies with what is declared in the literature as the presence of AMF, which is between 0.74 mm. and 0.89 mm. There were 17 studies included with a sample that fluctuated between 1 and 4000, with a cumulative total of 7946 and an average number of jaws analyzed from the studies of 467.4, showing statistically significant differences between the means with the sample analyzed in this study; p = 0.095. For the cumulative prevalence of the presence of AMF, this was 3.07 in this study, and in the compared studies, the average of AMF was 8.01%, which did not present a statistically significant difference; p = 0.158. Regarding the presence of variants of unilateral AMF, this occurred in five jaws, which is equivalent to 1.84% in the sample of this study, while in previous studies, it was 7.5%, being higher on the left side than on the right. The presence of AMF is a variant with high prevalence if we compare it with other variants of the jaw. Knowledge of the anatomy and position of the AMF is crucial to analyze different scenarios in the face of surgical procedures or conservative treatments of the lower anterior dental region.