Preference for different lip positions in a Turkish population

Abstract

Aim: This study evaluated the preferences for different lip positionsamong dental students, dentists, laypersons, and patients.Methodology: Average female and male silhouette profiles wereconstructed from published soft tissue data for the Turkish population.The lips in each average profile were protruded or retruded in 2 mmincrements with respect to Ricketts’ E-line. Five images were createdfrom the average profile and arranged randomly. Then, 54 dentalstudents, 55 dentists, 46 laypersons, and 60 orthodontic patients wereasked to rate each silhouette profile from 1 (least attractive) to 10(most attractive). The independent t-test was used to analyze theeffect of gender on preference and one-way analysis of variance wasused to determine whether there were differences among the groups.Results: The dentists favored profile ‘a’ (+2 mm protruded), whilethe other groups favored profile ‘e’ (average profile) in both sexes.Profile ‘d’ was the least favored profile, except in the dentists group.For the dental students, profile ‘d’ was the least favored of the maleprofiles and ‘c’ was the least favored of the female profiles. Therewere significant differences among the groups when assessing maleprofiles ‘a’, ‘c’ (p