Orthodontic Treatment Need And Outcome At University

ABSTRACT

The study aimed to assess patient satisfaction withtheir orthodontic treatment outcome and type of casesaccepted for orthodontic treatment at the Faculty ofDentistry, University of Malaya (UM) and to audit thequality of treatment outcome. The standard set were100% patient should be satisfied with their treatmentoutcome and less than 5% of the proportion of casesshould fall in the “worse/no different’ category with amean reduction of Peer Assessment Rating (PAR) scorebeing greater than 70%. Records of cases that hadcompleted orthodontic treatment were traced. Surveyforms were sent to 150 patients that had met theinclusion and exclusion criteria. Their intact studymodels were assessed for the Index of OrthodonticTreatment Need (IOTN) and PAR. 21.3% responded tothe survey, of which 59.4% had treatment involvingfixed appliances and 37.6% had either removable orfunctional appliances or retainers. 93.8% respondentswere satisfied with their dental alignment and 87.5%with the overall treatment results. For the dental healthcomponent of the IOTN, 63.3% had ‘definite need’ and21.1% had ‘borderline need’ for treatment. For theaesthetic component of the IOTN, 24.2% had ‘definiteneed’ and 32.0% had‘borderline need’ for treatment.For the PAR, 8.0% had an outcome of “worst/nodifferent”. The mean PAR reduction score was 75.3%.In conclusion, although majority were satisfied withtheir treatment results, there is still a need to improveon the standard of care to address the issues of theminority who were not satisfied with the treatmentoutcome.