Psychophysical testing of taste and flavour reactivity in young patients undergoing treatment with removable orthodontic appliances

Upper removable appliances (URA), as well as full dentures, are known to be the cause of various complaints related to oral handling of food and beverages, phonation and vocalization, in addition to general discomfort. To test the hypothesis that taste and flavour perception might also be affected by URA, 22 young orthodontic patients (10 males and 12 females aged 11.5 +/- 1.7 years; experimental group) wearing URA and 17 subjects (seven males and 10 females aged 11.6 +/- 2.0 years; control group) not wearing any orthodontic appliances were presented with a battery of eight intra-oral gustatory and three retro-nasal flavour stimuli. The subjects in the experimental group were tested on three different occasions and those in the control group on two occasions. All participants were required to label verbally the perceived taste and flavour sensations, as well as to estimate the palatability and intensity of the perceived sensation on a 100 mm visual analogue scale (VAS). Means and standard deviations were calculated from the individual values and then compared between the two groups and among the different testing times. Statistical significance was assessed with a level of confidence set at 0.025. The results revealed no significant difference between the indicative values chosen to represent taste and flavour reactivity, neither between the groups nor among different dates of testing within each group. Orthodontists should therefore encourage patients to also use the URA during meals, without any detrimental effect on taste and/or flavour perception.