Assessing the anatomical variations of lingual foramen and its bony canals with CBCT taken from 102 patients in Isfahan

BACKGROUND Some studies have been performed on assessing the anatomical variations of lingual foramen and its bony canals, in many different countries but no study has been performed in Iran yet. The purpose of this study is to assess the anatomical variations of lingual foramen and its bony canals with cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging in Isfahan. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a cross-sectional study in which CBCT images taken from 102 patients referred to the Radiology Department of Head and Neck in Esfahan (Iran) University between 2010 and 2011. The presence of the lingual foramen and its bony canals, the locations, sizes, and length were assessed. The distances between the terminal end of lingual canal at the buccal and lingual side from the inferior border of the mandible and alveolar crest were measured. We also evaluated the effect of patient age and gender on the dimensional measurements of the anatomical landmark mentioned above t test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and pearson's correlation were used for statistical analysis and P value lower than 0.05 was considered significant. RESULT All of the CBCT images taken showed the presence of lingual foramen. Of all the participants, 52% of them had two foramens in their images. The mean diameters of the upper and lower lingual foramen were 1.12 and 0.9 mm, respectively. CONCLUSION These anatomical landmarks in Isfahan population vary from previous studies. All of the images had at least one lingual foramen which demonstrates high prevalence of this anatomy among Isfehanian population. Therefore, it is recommended to use CBCT imaging for preoperative evaluation prior to installing dental implants.