ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to compare the clinical performance of 4 types of orthodontic wires, indicated for initial tooth alignment: stainless steel, multistranded steel, superelastic and thermoactivated nickel-titanium. A prospective randomized clinical trial was conducted on a sample of 45 patients, at the Dental School of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Fixed appliances were fitted and study casts were obtained from each patient. Randomly, the wires were allocated as follows: 26 dental arches for superelastic NiTi wires, 22 for stainless steel, 22 for multistranded and 20 for thermoactivated archwires. After 8 weeks, the archwires were removed and impressions for study casts were taken again. Using a 3D digitization technique of defined anatomical points on the study cast crowns, a Dental Irregularity Index (DII) was created for each study cast. The difference between DII before and after the archwire insertion expressed the aligning effect of the wires. ANOVA tests were employed to evaluate the anatomical point approximation (positive DII) and separation (negative DII), for each area of the dental arches: upper and lower whole arch and anterior arch. Results showed no significant difference between the different archwires.