impact of bimaxillary position on esthetic preferences among health professionals and lay persons

background : facial harmony and beauty make people attractive. one of the important parts that has a significant role in esthetics is the position of maxillary and mandibular bones. this study aimed to evaluate the effect of different positions of both jaws on esthetic preferences among health professionals and laypersons. materials and methods : two colored photographs of e profile were selected among one-hundred patients by evaluating the soft tissue parameters. photographs were changed with onyx-ceph software. all soft tissue landmarks of lower 3 rd part of the profiles were displaced in the horizontal plane by 2mm intervals relative to the true vertical plane. we selected different group of people as judges, who were lay persons (n=100), general dentists (n=100), plastic surgeons (n=25), orthodontists (n=25), and maxillofacial surgeons (n=24); and asked them to select their preferred profile and acceptable anterior and posterior limits. anova and lsd post-hoc tests were carried out to determine the differences among the responses of groups. results: no significant differences were found among the judges´ opinion regarding the most attractive profile. ranges for male photographs were statistically different in evaluators groups. a wider range was accepted for the male subject by plastic surgeons and general dentists which was significant comparing to laypersons (p<0.05). conclusion:   all of the evaluators selected the straight profile as the most preferred one. however, the range of acceptability was the narrowest in the layperson group in comparison with plastic surgeons and general dentists. gender of the judges did not have an impact on their selections.