Orthodontically treated young adults: awareness of their own dental arrangement

Orthodontic treatment goals are generally based upon professional ideals of function, aesthetics, and stability. In order to evaluate whether the professional treatment goals are meaningful to the patients, awareness of their own occlusion was studied in 80 orthodontically treated individuals (mean age 18.3 years). By comparing the treated patients to a control group of 50 untreated individuals (mean age 17.8 years) the effect of the treatment experience on the level of awareness was also examined. Awareness was assessed by comparing the subjects' answers to six questions about their own dental arrangement, to recordings on study casts according to two sets of criteria. These criteria defined malocclusion and minor deviations in tooth position. The validity of the method was tested by asking the subjects to identify their own teeth among 18 dental photographs. Almost two-thirds of the treated subjects described their teeth without making mistakes according to the malocclusion criteria. When the minor deviation criteria were applied, one third answered all the six questions correctly and two-thirds made not more than one mistake. Compared to the control group no significant differences existed as most untreated individuals also gave accurate descriptions. Eighty-two per cent of the tested subjects identified their own photo on the first attempt. Professional treatment goals seem to be justified by the high level of dental awareness in young adults, and the findings indicate that the treatment per se does not affect perceptual accuracy.