Quality of Orthodontic Treatment

Quality of orthodontic treatment has profound implications for the practicing orthodontist, the patient, policy makers, and third party payers. Developing process and outcome measures to evaluate the quality of orthodontic care has become a mandatory component in determining efficiency and effectiveness of contemporary evidence-based clinical practice. A prerequisite of these quantitative measures is that they should be reliable and valid and reflect the clinician’s and patient’s preferences and perspectives. Orthodontists typically evaluate the outcome of treatment by measuring morphological components of malocclusion, duration of treatment, and cephalometric changes. The orthodontic patients, especially adults, are usually more concerned with quality of life issues and oral health implications. This may result in a lack of concordance between the clinician/provider and the patient/consumer when evaluating success of the outcome of orthodontic treatment. Quality of life measures is a rapidly developing and methodologically sophisticated field. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of quality of orthodontic treatment from both the clinician’s and the patient’s perspective.