Cross-sectional study of malocclusion in Spanish children.

OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to determine the orthodontic treatment need of the child population of the Valencia region of Spain, employing the DAI and the IOTN, to examine the relations between treatment need, socio-economic data and gender and to assess the diagnostic agreement between the two indices. STUDY DESIGN: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in a random representative sample of the schoolchild population of the Valencia region of Spain. The sample size was a total of 765 children aged 12 and 15 years at 39 schools. RESULTS: The orthodontic treatment need assessed by the DAI was 21.7% at 12 years of age and 14.1% at 15 years. The orthodontic treatment need assessed by the IOTN DHC was 20.9% at 12 years of age and 12.7% at 15 years. The diagnostic agreement between the DAI and the modified IOTN was moderate, with Kappa scores of 0.426 at 12 years of age and 0.415 for the 15-year-old group. CONCLUSIONS: Approximately 20% of the children needed orthodontic treatment. Neither gender nor social class appeared to exert a significant influence on orthodontic treatment need.

Orthodontic treatment need in a 12-year-old population in the Western Sahara.

The aim of this study was to establish orthodontic treatment need according to the Dental Aesthetic Index (DAI) and Aesthetic Component (AC) and Dental Health Component (DHC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN) and to determine its association with gender among Saharan schoolchildren. The study was carried out in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for oral health surveys at 12 years of age. The sample comprised 248 Sahrawi children (135 girls and 113 boys) living in refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria. None of the children had previously received any orthodontic treatment. A chi-square test was used to analyse the IOTN results by gender, and a Student's t-test was employed for the DAI results. The mean DAI was 23.32 with a standard deviation of 6.05, 4 percent with a very severe and 9.2 per cent with severe malocclusion. Orthodontic treatment need was 16.1 and 2.0 percent, respectively, according to grades 4 and 5 of the IOTN DHC, 13.7 percent according to the IOTN AC, and 28.6 percent according to the modified IOTN (IOTN DHC grades 4-5 and/or IOTN AC grades 8-10). There were no statistically significant differences by gender. The orthodontic treatment need of Western Saharan schoolchildren is similar to that reported by many recent studies in European and in Sub-Saharan countries.