REMOVABLE ORTHODONTIC APPLIANCES: FREQUENCY AND CLEANING AGENTS USED BY STUDENTS AND RECOMMENDED BY DENTISTS - BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF ORAL SCIENCES, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2016, pp. 21-26

In the last years, the need for orthodontic treatments has increased. Very few studies have investigated the attitudes of dentist towards oral prevention measures. Children who are in the treatment of removable orthodontic appliances (ROA) have a higher risk for proximal caries, gingivitis, and halitosis as compared to children without ROA. The children’s characteristics treated with orthodontic appliances are important and therefore, the dentist recommendation should present alternates to reduce microbiota and prevent other oral diseases.

The study aims to 1) evaluate the prevalence of the ROA use by adolescents from the age of 13 to 19 years in the city of Pelotas. Looking for possible links with socio-demographic factors and hygiene habits 2) to confirm hygiene method prescribed by dentist. The study was conducted in two different stages, the first stage consisted of having telephone interviews. Any dentist on the registered dentist list from the regional council of dentistry of Rio and Brazil dental association, who lived in Pelotas, and worked in treatment involving ROA were included in the study.  The dentist was asked questions regarding the hygiene methods for cleaning acrylic appliances. The second part of the study was student interviews, where children from different socio-economic status were asked questions. Both, public and private school students were included in the sample. The questions consisted of demographic information’s, behavioral habits and characteristics. These data’s collected were then analyzed by the Chi-square test and logistic regression.

Two hundred and thirty-five dentists participated in the study and 9.6 % indicated to brush ROA with soap, 8.0 % advised immersion in hypochlorite, chlorhexidine or peroxide solutions, 6.0 % suggested other cleaning material and 1.6 % suggested Corega tabs. Most dentist, 64%, recommended cleaning the appliances 3 times a day. Thus, dentists (47.2%) reported preferring mechanical methods to clean their ROA. The prevalence of children using ROA was 3.4 % and they also preferred mechanical methods to clean their ROA (89.7 %). Thus, one can conclude that there is a higher frequency of hygiene on the ROA.

This case study concluded that not a lot of people in schools were using removable appliances. The cleaning methods they used was mechanical which was prescribed by doctors. An interesting factor to this study was that they hygiene frequency was considered to have an association with the routine of the use of the appliances with the type of hygiene method.