Dentistry is a client dependent field. Other than the dentist’s skills, the dentist’s appearance has been observed to affect the patient’s perception of the clinician. This research was conducted to assess patient’s perception of the dentist’s appearance based on the dentist’s attire, gender and age. A total number of 492 Malay respondents were involved in this study. A set of questionnaires was randomly distributed via google forms. This questionnaire consisted of three sections, including socio-demographic details of the respondents, patient’s perception towards dentist’s attire and patient’s perception towards dentist’s gender and age. The result showed that respondents consisted of 78% female and 22% male. The highest percentage of participants was in the age group of 18-30 (85.6%), while the lowest percentage of respondents came from the age group of 49-60 (5.3%). The majority of respondents (51%) preferred a dentist who wears a white coat followed by a dentist in scrub (38.2%) and a dentist dressed in formal attires (9.3%). Only 1.4% of respondents selected a dentist who wears casual attire. Participants also prefer dentist in the age group of 41-60 years old, while participants had no preference toward dentist’s gender. A final open-ended question showed respondents also preferred to see dentists with acceptable dental appearance, good behaviour and established qualification. In conclusion, a dentist’s appearance is important to secure a promising interpretation of the patient towards the dentist.

Geometric morphometrics is a new approach for shape identification in diagnosis of malocclusion. Lateral cephalogram is an X-ray that taken for diagnosing malocclusion in dental setting. The aim of this study was to determine the differences of craniofacial shape in malocclusion by application of two-dimensional geometric morphometrics and to compile the database of malocclusion in adult Malaysian population. Lateral cephalogram radiographs of 381 adults Malaysia (age 18-45) were retrieved retrospectively and assigned to three groups according to their occlusion: class I, class II, and class III. The geometric morphometric shape study incorporated nine landmarks and was analyzed in details using tpsUtil p software. Geometric morphometric analysis such was done using MorphoJ software. The results of the principal component's analysis (PCA) yielded 14 main components responsible for 100% of the variation exhibited by the malocclusion with three highly significant PCA. The highest Mahalanobis distances were exhibited by the malocclusion class II and III population. The Procrustes ANOVA showed that the shape effect was highly significant (P<0.01). The discriminant function analysis showed the high percentage of 80% discriminate among the malocclusions after cross-validation. There are significant differences for ANB angle (A point-Nasion-B point) in all malocclusion groups. Class II has the widest ANB angle while class III has the most acute ANB angle. Skeletal shape was clearly associated with dental malocclusion and showed considerable variation. Geometric morphometrics is an alternative research tool and can be used for diagnosing individual classification of malocclusion.