Abstract
Objective:
To evaluate the association between adolescents’ orthodontic quality of life before initiating orthodontic treatment and their objective case complexity as measured by the American Board of Orthodontics’ Discrepancy Index (DI).
Design and setting:
A single-centre, cross-sectional survey study.
Methods:
The Orthodontic Quality of Life Assessment Survey (OQoLAS) was administered to 240 adolescents (aged 11–14 years) during their record-gathering appointment. After completion of the survey, a DI score was calculated for each patient based on pretreatment measurements. Pearson correlation coefficients, r, were used to assess the association of DI scores with OQoLAS total and subdomain scores. A multiple linear regression of OQoLAS total scores adjusting for age, gender and DI scores was conducted.
Results:
The study did not find a strong correlation between OQoLAS and DI scores (r = 0.10; P = 0.6497). On average, the OQoLAS scores (functional, emotional and social subdomains of OQoLAS) were slightly higher among girls than among boys but there was no statistical difference for total OQoLAS score between boys and girls (42.4 vs. 45.4, P = 0.2005). However, there was a significant difference in oral health perception rating between boys and girls, with girls being more likely to rate their oral health positively (adjusted P = 0.0226). The total DI scores of boys with respect to girls were not statistically different (P = 0.4256). The components of the DI that showed highest score were for cephalometric measures, followed by overjet; and the lowest scores were for lateral open bite and buccal posterior crossbite. The measure of association analysis did not show any strong correlation between the OQoLAS (total score and subdomain scores), and DI score or any of its components.
Conclusion:
Malocclusion severity was not found to be correlated with orthodontic quality of life in adolescents aged 11–14 years seeking orthodontic treatment.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
