Impact of Age and Marital Status of Orthodontic Patients on their Satisfaction with Duration of Treatment, Perception and Attitude towards Accelerated Orthodontics

Background: The idea of accelerated orthodontics is to modify the bone temporarily to enable teeth move faster in the jaws so as to shorten the orthodontic treatment time. With the increasing global interests in patients’ concerns about the duration of conventional orthodontic treatment and accelerated orthodontics, there is need to investigate further into the factors that could impact the patients’ satisfaction, perception and attitude towards accelerated orthodontics.

Aim: To investigate the impact of age and marital status of orthodontic patients on their satisfaction with conventional orthodontic treatment, as well as their perception and attitude towards accelerated orthodontics.

Materials and Methods: Using a questionnaire, a clinic-based cross-sectional and prospective study of orthodontic patients in a Nigerian teaching hospital was carried out between March, 2023 and May, 2024.The questionnaire contents involving their satisfaction with duration of orthodontic treatment and their perception and attitude towards accelerated orthodontics were analysed for associations with the patients’ age and marital status. The IBM SPSS version 25 was used to analyze the data involving descriptive statistics, the ANOVA and independent t-test. The significance level set at P< .05.

Results: Significant associations were found between patients’ age and their satisfaction with orthodontic treatment duration (P < .05) and one procedure of accelerated orthodontics (P<.05). No significant associations were found between their marital status and satisfaction with duration of orthodontic treatment, as well as with their perception and attitude towards accelerated orthodontics (P>.05).

Conclusion and Recommendation: Patients’ age had significant impact on satisfaction with orthodontic treatment duration, and slightly on perception and attitude towards accelerated orthodontics but marital status did not. More of such studies are required in other orthodontic communities for evidence-based clinical orthodontic practice.