Occlusal plane parallel to camper plane: reality or fallacy? A tomographic study on human Sambaqui skeletal remains

Abstract

Introduction: Since long time ago, dentists had used parallelism with Camper plane as a reference to establish a correct occlusal plane. However, in the literature, there are several different landmarks used to trace the occlusal plane and there are also many researchers questioning this parallelism. To evaluate it, we used ancient skulls from Human Sambaqui skeletal remains. The authors choose an ancient population because they were submitted to same environmental conditions, avoiding bias in craniofacial growth epigenetic stimuli. Methodology: For this work we analyzed tomographies of 27 well preserved adult skulls. The program used was Vista Dent Pro 2.1. Camper plane was determined according to the original points described by Peter Camper. We used the four occlusal planes more cited in the literature. Results: None of the occlusal planes evaluated on this study, showed parallelism with Camper plane. The occlusal plane determined by posterior teeth was the one that showed less divergence but still with a high SD and mediana. Conclusion: In Sambaqui ancient population, Camper plane was not a reliable reference to trace occlusal plane. It is necessary further investigations to find a better reference for prosthetic, orthodontic, functional orthopedics or orthognathic surgery purpose.