Pont’s Index

This term refers to the relationship between the width of the four upper molars and the width of the teeth quadrants, as was first made public by the French orthodontist A. Pont in 1907. The values that Pont provided from data collected in the south of France were actually replaced in Germany by data produced by Linder, Harth and Korkhaus. This is how it worked; orthodontists always tried to widen the teeth quadrants to the point where they were the same size as the value prescribed in the index. However, later investigations proved that there is actually no correlation of any diagnostic or therapeutic value between the width of teeth and the width of teeth quadrants which means that any indices of this kind are complete nonsense. Nevertheless, these indices have still been (and are still being?) taught in some German universities over the past few years. Pont’s Index has long been forgotten outside German-speaking countries or is now just viewed as a curiosity.