Adult patients treated at the Department of Jaw Orthopaedics, Medical University of Lublin

Abstract

Adults con sti tute a spe cific group of or tho don tic patients. In 1990, Grubb re ported an in crease in the number of adult or tho don tic pa tients by 800% in com pari son with 1970 [11]. Ameri can and Euro pean re ports sug gest that mal oc clu sion af fects 2/3 to 3/4 of adults [3]. Stud ies conducted in Swe den and the Neth er lands showed the incidence of mal oc clu sion rang ing from 40 to 76% of adults [21]. Ac cord ing to Burger mo dijk et al., 14% of Dan ish popu la tion seeks or tho don tic treat ment [3]. In Po land, the ma jor ity of stud ies on preva lence of mal oc clu sion have in volved chil dren and ado les cents. In the group of eighteen-year-old in di vidu als, the per cent age of mal oc clu sion cases os cil lated be tween 60.6% and 71.2%, de pend ing on the re gion [2,13,19].Women are more aware of their mal oc clu sion compared to men and con sti tute about 70% of or tho don tic pa tients in the USA and Eng land [9,11,14]. The per centage of adult fe male pa tients in Spain reaches 92.5% [23]. In Nor way the av er age age for adults to be gin the or thodon tic treat ment is 28.3 years [1] whereas in Spain -25.8 years (rang ing from 18 to 28 years of age) [21]. Lit era ture re ports have re vealed that in most cases adult pa tients are treated due to den tal ab nor mali ties [1,3,8,16,17,18,21]. AIMThe aim of the pres ent study was to make an over view of age, sex and mal oc clu sion of adult pa tients ad mit ted to the De part ment of Jaw Or tho pae dics, Medi cal Uni ver sity of Lublin in the years 1995-2009. MATERIAL AND METHODSThe study was based on medi cal rec ords (den tal records, di ag nos tic mod els, pano ramic ra dio graphs, lat eral cepha lo met ric ra dio graphs) of pa tients treated at the Depart ment of Jaw Or tho pae dics in the years 1995-2009. From among 8892 of all pa tients treated dur ing this period, the in di vidu als above 18 years of age were in cluded in the study. Data con cern ing age, sex and mal oc clu sion were col lected from their den tal rec ords. Pa tients were divided into five groups ac cord ing to the chrono logi cal age, at which they were ad mit ted for treat ment: Group A. ABSTRACTThe aim of the present study was to make an overview of the age, sex and malocclusion of adult patients admitted to the Department of Jaw Orthopaedics, Medical University of Lublin in the years 1995-2009. In the 15 years under study, the orthodontic treatment was started by 8892 patients, including 642 patients above 18 years of age, which constituted 7.2% of the total number of patients treated during that period. The most numerous group was the group of 20-24 year-old subjects, whereas the least numerous was that including 35 year-olds. Women undertook orthodontic treatment decidedly more of ten -69.8% of patients. In the years 1995-2009 adults from the Lublin region made up a small percentage of orthodontic patients treated in the Department of Jaw Orthopaedics (only 7.22%). Young adults (average age 22.9 years) prevail in the group of adult patients who decided on t...