Assessment of Anatomic Variations in the Mandible by CBCT

Objective: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of mandibular neurovascular anatomical variations in a group Turkish population with cone beam computed tomography. Methods: Sagittal, axial, coronal, serial cross-sectional and three-dimensional reformatted 410 CBCT images were investigated in accordance with age and gender. Median lingual foramen, lateral lingual foramen, mandibular incisive canal, anterior loop, accessory mental foramen, retromolar foramen, bifid mandibular canal, absence of mental foramen were evaluated in multiplanar sections. Obtained data were analysed with the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 package program. Results: Images of cases with a mean age of 44.25 ± 17.47 years, consisting of 233 (56.8%) men and 177 (43.2%) women, total 410 CBCT were included in the study. The most detected anatomical variation was the median lingual foramen (44.7%), followed by the mandibular incisive canal (33.9%). No statistically significant relationship was found between parameters and gender (p>0.05). Conclusions: Although the anterior interforaminal region is known as a safe region for surgery, the results of this study show that the presence of lingual foramina and mandibular incisive canal is not at a level that can be ignored.