Orthodontic Treatment in Adults: an Objective Approach

Leopoldino CAPELOZZA FILHO, Sílvia Augusta BRAGA, Arlete de Oliveira CAVASSAN, Terumi Okada OZAWA

The number of adult patients is increasing in orthodontic offices. Many reasons have already been listed to justify this phenomenon. The development of the orthodontic appliances, the societies’ knowledgement of the advantages concerning the orthodontic treatment, and the increase of the esthetic demands among adults, whose social, affective and professional life extend toward senility, are some of them. Adult patients have special characteristics when compared to adolescents. The growth they experiment is not active to help the treatment, they want to have a fast and effective treatment, and the frequency of periodontal diseases in this group is high. Except in the cases with severe skeletal discrepancies, whose treatment combines orthodontics and orthognatic surgery, the treatment indicated to adult patients must eliminate the patient’s main compliance and restore a physiologic occlusion where pathologic consequences of malocclusion are evident. Sometimes, low conventional attitudes, as stripping, are necessary. Stripping creates the exactly needed amount of space in the place where it will solve crowding or protrusion. It reduces treatment time and periodontal damages, increasing the patient satisfaction. The partial treatment maintain intact areas of healthy and stable occlusion, even though they are not considerated a relation of ideal, or even normal, occlusion for the traditional classification.

Keywords: Orthodontics. Adult.

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 19:34