Perceptions of dental professionals and laypeople to altered maxillary incisor crowding

Orthodontists are more critical than other groups when evaluating the misalignment of the maxillary incisors. It appears that the central incisors play a more important role than do the lateral incisors when dental crowding impacts smile esthetics. For all observer groups, it also appears that people are more sensitive to the misalignment of a single tooth than they are to the same level of crowding distributed over multiple teeth.