Presentations 2020: Ortho&Paeds

361 - Open Vs Closed Exposure of Palatally Displaced Maxillary Canines: A Retrospective Observational Study

AC Evans D Ramkumar M Faulkner
Presented by: Alys Evans
Royal Gwent Hospital

Aim: To investigate the impact of surgical exposure techniques of palatally ectopic canines on the duration of fixed appliance therapy at two District General hospitals Materials and Methods: Data was collected from January 2016 to December 2017 using online and paper orthodontic records. All patients were 20 years old and the canines analysed were palatally ectopic. Treatment completion was defined as appropriate canine position within the maxillary arch. The canines were graded using the index created by McSherry and Pitt et al. who identified four positional characteristics used to determine the prognosis of alignment. Numerical values were assigned for data collection ranging from scores of 4-12 (12 being the highest estimated treatment difficulty). In cases where both maxillary canines required exposure, the canine with the uppermost difficulty grading was used for analysis. Results: Over 70 cases were considered with 34 cases included in the study. The exclusion list included 23 cases which were still in active treatment, 3 cases were terminated and 14 cases were transferred to other orthodontic departments. The open technique was clearly favoured with 31 total cases, whereas just 3 cases involved the closed technique. In 2016 and 2017 there were only 7 closed exposure cases available for analysis, 4 of which were still undergoing active treatment and therefore unable to be included. The average treatment time for open exposure was 30.7 months and the average difficulty rating was 7.6. Average treatment time for the closed technique was 28.0 months with an average difficulty rating of 6.6. No correlation was found between canine difficulty and duration of alignment. Conclusion: The closed technique average was almost 3 months quicker than the open technique. However, an insufficient number of closed technique cases were available. Further data collection is required to yield a greater scope of analysis.
Consent Statement: There are no details on individual patients reported within the abstract.

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