Morphological analysis of palatal rugae patterns in konkan samplepopulation: A cross-sectional study

Background: Palatal rugae are irregular and non-identical mucosal elevations seen onthe anterior third of palate. They are arranged in transverse direction on either side of the median palatine raphe and are protected from high temperature and traumabecause of their rational position in the oral cavity. Their number and patterns are not uniform in all the individuals, and they appear to vary in different population subsets. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate thequantitative and qualitative parameters of palatal rugae using studymodels of Konkan samples. Objectives: To analyze andcorrelate the qualitative characters such as Number, size and shape inmale and female study samples. Materials and Methods: One hundred dental stone casts of patients with an age range of 17–25 years were selected.The outlines of the rugae were traced using microtip graphite pencil and examined usingmagnifying glass for different patterns. The quantity and quality of rugae patterns wererecorded according to Thomas et al. classification and the data were statistically analyzedby the statistician using SPSS program. Results: The mean rugae count was higher in males (9.90) than in females (9.86).The number of primary rugae count was more in both the sexes.Primary and secondary Rugae was higher among females than males while mean fragmented Rugae was higher among males (0.66) than females (0.58). Curvy, Straightand circular Rugae were higher among females than males while mean Wavy Rugae was higher among males (4.08) than females (3.36). Conclusion: There is no gender discrimination in relation to palatal rugae in the present study samples. No two study casts showed similarity in the distribution of palatal rugae patterns. The curvy and wavy rugae distributions were predominant in Konkan population.