Benjamín Sánchez Trocino; Jacinto Armando Díaz Acevedo; Maria del Carmen Villanueva-Vilchis; Javier De la Fuente-Hernández; Leonardo Daniel Sarmiento Rebolledo; Alejandro Ricardo Sánchez Amador & Diego Iván López Tirado

Some dental treatments that are performed in the mandibular teeth involve manipulation of anatomical structures near the dental periapex, so it is likely to cause nerve damage due to the proximity of the inferior alveolar nerve with the apices of the mandibular teeth, mainly in the molar area. The aim of this study was to determine through Computed Tomography (CT) scan the existing distance between the mandibular canal and the anatomical structures adjacent to its path which will help to reduce the risk of injury to the inferior alveolar nerve during the different dental treatments developed in this zone. A cross-sectional study was performed where the study population consisted of 50 patients of both sexes, between 20 and 30 years with a full dentition mandible. Patients underwent a CT study of the mandible with coronal planes at 1.5 mm, the right side and the left side of each jaw were considered for the analysis and millimetric measuring was held of the distances of the mandibular canal (MC) from different anatomical structures. Subsequently, a statistical analysis was performed to obtain the mean and standard deviation of the distances between the mandibular canal and some adjacent anatomical structures. The distance from the alveolar nerve canal to the apex of the lower third molar in average was 1.49 mm on the right side and 1.69 mm on the left side, the distance between the mandibular canal and lingual cortical at the lower first molar level on average was 3.54 mm on the right side and 4.02 mm on the left side and the distance between the lingual cortical at the second molar level was on average 2.86 mm on the right side and 3.6 mm on the left side.

KEY WORDS: Mandibular Nerve; Molar; Third molar; Trigeminal nerve injuries; Cranial nerve injuries.