Frequency of Buccal Pits and Defective Buccal Pits in Mandibular Molars of Children and Adolescents

A buccal pit is a prominent point-like depression that appears at the cervical end of the mandibular molar developmental grooves. A defective buccal pit can be defined as a buccal pit in which the continuity of the dentinoenamel junction is broken and the pit extends to the dentinal level. This study aimed to determine the frequency of buccal pits and defective buccal pits in un-erupted mandibular first and second molars using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). The analysis was performed on CBCT images taken from 417 Korean children and adolescents who visited the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Yonsei University Dental Hospital between 2004 and 2020. Based on cross-sectional views of CBCT images, buccal pits were categorized into 4 classes according to the depth of the pits. The expression rate of the buccal pits was 29.1%. The prevalence of defective buccal pits was 7.9%. The buccal pits tended to develop bilaterally. To date, this is the most comprehensive study on the frequency of buccal pits with the largest sample size. This was the first attempt worldwide to analyze the depth of the buccal pit using CBCT images and to define a defective buccal pit worldwide.