Correlation between malocclusion severity and treatment expectancy of adolescent patients

Objectives: To identify the correlation of malocclusion severity and treatment expectancy of adolescent malocclusion patients. Methods: 137 initial visited malocclusion patients (14.0 + 1.6 years old; Female 65, Male 72) were erolled in this study. The ICON and treatment expectancy of each patient (Including outcome expectancy OE and consuming expectancy CE ) were evaluated from the study models and questionnaire. Correlations between ICON and patient's expectancy were analysed by the Independent-T test, Kendall test and Spearman test in SPSS 12.0 . Results: Negative correlation between ICON and OE was significant both in the scattered plot and statistic analysis (α=0.05 Kendall's test P=0.01 R=-2.29; Spearman's test P=0.01 R=-2.83). No obvious correlation was found between ICON and CE (Kendall's test P=0.473 R=0.048; Spearman's test P=0.059 R=0.491). Conclusions: Malocclusion patients with different severity have different treatment outcome expectancy. Patients with less severity expect more from the treatment outcome. However, malocclusion severity is not a factor in orthodontic consuming determination.