Evaluating skeletal vs dental malocclusions in dogs and cats

During this interview with dvm360, Emily Edstrom, DVM, DAVDC, explains how to differentiate skeletal from dental malocclusion in dogs and cats, emphasizing that the quickest method is to assess incisor alignment, which should mirror normal human incisor alignment. Some of the tips in the interview include Edstrom advising professionals to evaluate the rest of the bite for proper occlusal alignment and confirm a correct scissor bite with well-interdigitating premolars, ensuring the incisors line up properly, and more.

Below is a full transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Emily Edstrom, DVM, DAVDC: My name is Emily Edstrom, and I'm a veterinary dentist. I work at a BluePearl Pet Hospital in Arden Hills, Minnesota, and I've been practicing veterinary dentistry. I graduated [from] vet school in 2010, so I've been doing pretty much exclusively dentistry since then.

The biggest way to differentiate a skeletal malocclusion from a dental malocclusion—really, the easiest and fastest—is to look at incisors, because…just think of how our incisors line up. That's how dogs’ and cats’ incisors should also line up. And that's the fastest way to give you a glimpse of what their bite looks like.

If things line up right here, that means they don't have a skeletal malocclusion. Most likely, right? Skeletal malocclusion is where the lower jaw is too short or the lower jaw is too long. So the easiest way to look at that is with the incisors.

From there, you can…check the canines [to] make sure they're occluding appropriately, and then check for that scissor bite where we've got the premolars interdigitating with each other.