Patient motivation before orthodontic treatment

Objectives: Patient motivation and compliance are two main points for good treatment results. The problems in orthodontics are the long term treatment (3-4 years) and the age of the patients (children). The goal of our investigations were to find out different forms of patients motivation before treatment, during treatment and if and how the treatment result can be effected by patient motivation.Here we present the first part of our investigation: different forms of patient motivation before treatment. Methods: 271 children (142 male, 129 female), aged 7-18 were questioned before orthodontic treatment. To minimised the influence of the investigator we used patients from different orthodontic offices. We evaluated questions concerning their motivation before treatment. Results:The statistical results of our 271 questionnaire were: 23 patients were very well motivated, 69 less motivated and 179 not motivated to start (and to finished) an orthodontic treatment. We figured out that these results go along with the person who motivated the patients to visit the orthodontist. The very well motivated group of patients are rather ready to accept "uncomfortable" devices of treatment and longer times of treatment than less or not motivated patients. They were willingness to make more compromises concerning treatment time, appointments, appliances, discomfort and aesthetic effects throughout orthodontics than the other groups. Conclusions: Our investigation verified different forms and different amounts of patient motivation before orthodontic treatment. Surprisingly less than 10% of the questioned patients were very well motivated to start an orthodontic treatment. Further investigations will show if the motivation changed during treatment and if and how these will effect the orthodontic result.