Hyperactive Dental Lamina in a 24-Yearold Female – A Case Report and Review of Literature

An extra tooth to the normal formula of teeth sequence in any region of dental arch is regarded as Supernumerary teeth (ST). The reasons are still not clearly known, one of them being dichotomy of tooth bud, but the more accepted reason is the hyperactivity theory. Supernumerary teeth are present more in permanent dentition than in primary dentition and can present as a single entity or multiple, unilaterally or bilaterally, impacted or erupted, in either or both the dental arches. This article discusses the supernumerary teeth in detail with a case discussion of a non-syndromic 24-year-old girl, with six ST (bicuspids) present in all the four quadrants. In the mandible, ST’s showed a classical clustered flower like presentation. The interesting feature in the presented case was the sequential orthopantomographs taken at various ages of the patient that showed continuous development of STs in all four quadrants, thus pointing to the theory of hyperactive dental lamina or atavism. An electronic search was conceded in PubMed, Cochrane Library and google scholar databases, and articles dated between December 1932 and December 2012 were selected to review the occurrence patterns of supernumerary teeth in non-syndromic cases.