The Seven-year Outcome of an Early Orthodontic Treatment Strategy

Abstract

The benefits of early orthodontic treatment are continuously discussed, but studies are few. We examined whether definite need for orthodontic treatment could be eliminated in public health care by systematically focusing on early intervention. One age cohort living in a rural Finnish municipality (N = 85) was regularly followed from ages 8 to 15 years, and persons with malocclusions were treated according to a pre-planned protocol. Treatment need was assessed according to the Dental Health Component (DHC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need, and treatment outcome by the Peer Assessment Rating Index (PAR). Fifty-two percent of the cohort received treatment, and definite treatment need decreased from 33% to 9%. In the treated group, the mean PAR score reduction was 63%, and 51% showed more than 70% improvement. The results suggest that an early treatment strategy may considerably reduce the need for orthodontic treatment in public health care with limited specialist resources.

The objective and subjective outcome of orthodontic care in one municipal health center

“…Although the final number of adolescents included in the study was small (n = 61), it represented 91% of the whole age cohort living in the municipality. The proportion of orthodontically treated adolescents was slightly lower than in other Finnish studies in which the proportions of orthodontically treated young adults have varied between 42-52% [13,16,19,20]. The share of discontinued treatments corresponded well to the earlier findings [13,16,20,21].…”

“…The proportion of orthodontically treated adolescents was slightly lower than in other Finnish studies in which the proportions of orthodontically treated young adults have varied between 42-52% [13,16,19,20]. The share of discontinued treatments corresponded well to the earlier findings [13,16,20,21]. However, the small number of orthodontically treated adolescents and the heterogeneity of appliances used did not allow for comparisons between different treatment methods or the timing of treatment.…”

“…Indices designed for evaluation of orthodontic treatment need have also been applied to assess the outcome, including the residual treatment need among orthodontic patients [12][13][14][15][16][17]. The Occlusal Morphology and Function Index (OMFI) was developed to clinically evaluate the outcome of orthodontic care at the population level.…”

Tooth eruption sequence and dental crowding: a case-control study

“…Prevention and interception of orthodontic problems are major concerns as they can improve the quality of life of people and save their money and time 2, 3 . Preventing a developing malocclusion or intercepting its path is always more economic and less complicated than correcting the resulting malocclusion later 4, 5 . In many countries, due to the shortage of specialists or the inability of the society to afford treatment, delivering orthodontic treatment after crowding has developed is not possible.…”

Randomized Clinical Trial of Interceptive and Comprehensive Orthodontics

“…This and other studies showing improvement following IO (Pangrazio-Kulbersh et al, 1999;Ngan and Yiu, 2000;King et al, 2003;Mirabelli et al, 2005;Kerosuo et al, 2008) did not consider the possibility for relapse and other negative consequences from continued facial growth. Therefore, the current study follows children who received interceptive treatment for 2 more yrs, with the finding that the PAR improvement did deteriorate slightly [i.e., 15.4 at completion of IO (Jolley et al, 2010) to 21.0 at 48 mos in this study], but remained significant.…”