Prevalência de defeitos de esmalte em indivíduos portadores de fissuras labiopalatinas da Paraíba, Brasil

the enamel defects are some of the changes affecting persons with palatoschisis. the aim or present paper was to describe the prevalence of enamel defects with labial and palatine fissure, as well as its distribution by type of fissure in patients came to orthodontics service of paraíba, brazil. a cross-sectional and observational study was conducted to collect data from the postmortem physical examination of 76 patients with palatoschisis through the unilateral and bilateral incisor foramen, of both sexes and a mean age of 13.3 years. the examination was performed in the upper incisor and canines by two examiners previously trained (kappa= 0.89). patients included were those came to service from january to june, 2011, where the vestibular surfaces of teeth allowed a clinical assessment. those with malformations and no primary surgery were excluded. data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and chi2 test with a significance of 5 %. the male sex accounted for 57.9 % and the left unilateral fissure was of 40.8 %. in relation to enamel defects, the more involved tooth was the central incisor and a diffuse opacity for a 14.9 % followed by the presence of limited opacity for a 13.15 % and hypoplasia for a 10.9 %. there were statistically significant differences (p< 0.00001) between fissure and the contralateral side. results showed the high frequency of enamel defects in the study patients, mainly in bilateral cases and in teeth adjacent to fissure side.