From Volume 48, Issue 4, April 2021 | Pages 266-270
The term double tooth has often replaced the clinical diagnosis of gemination or fusion. If teeth have been extracted or exfoliated, the use of the neutral term ‘double tooth’ avoids the need to arbitrarily decide if it was gemination or fusion in origin. This case reports on a 16-year-old male who presented with an UL2 ‘double tooth’ and his combined restorative, surgical and orthodontic intervention to achieve his ideal result.
Dental anomalies can be considered by the developmental stage at which they arise. Double teeth (geminated or fused teeth) arise during the dental lamina formation stage. However, the exact aetiology of gemination and fusion remains unclear. There are numerous hypotheses, some of which mention its association with local metabolic interferences, which occur in the morphodifferentiation stage of the tooth germ.1 Without further research being undertaken to investigate the embryological events during odontogenesis that lead to the development of this anomaly, it is difficult to determine the exact aetiological factors and pathogenesis underlying ‘double teeth’.2 The double tooth is a relatively common dental anomaly with a prevalence of 0.5% in the deciduous dentition and 0.1% in the permanent dentition, with no known variation between genders.3 The double tooth can be linked to syndromes such as achondroplasia and chondroectodermal dysplasia, although this anomaly can still found in non-syndromic patients.4
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