Relationship between pretreatment case complexity and orthodontic clinical outcomes determined by the American Board of Orthodontics criteria.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relationship between pretreatment case complexity and orthodontic treatment outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The total sample contained 1693 cases (853 females and 840 males, mean age  =  16.3 years) from the archives of postgraduate orthodontic clinics. The complexity of each case was evaluated using the American Board of Orthodontics (ABO) Discrepancy Index (DI), and orthodontic clinical outcomes were evaluated using the ABO Objective Grading System (OGS). Only one investigator evaluated all cases. Multivariate analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and multiple variable regression analysis were used for statistical evaluation (P < .05 as significant). RESULTS: The mean total DI score was 16.2, and the mean total OGS score was 18. No significant correlation was found between the total DI and the total OGS scores. However, pretreatment overbite, lateral open bite, crowding, buccal posterior crossbite, and other components affected the total OGS score significantly. The highest percentage of passing OGS values was found for cases of medium-level complexity. CONCLUSION: This retrospective study of university clinical records showed that the posttreatment clinical outcomes were significantly affected from pretreatment case complexity. Posttreatment alignment was affected significantly from pretreatment buccal posterior crossbite and cephalometric values. Similarly, posttreatment buccolingual inclination was affected from pretreatment anterior open bite, occlusion, and other factors. Occlusal contacts were affected significantly from pretreatment lingual posterior crossbite and other factors. In addition, we determined that posttreatment root angulations were affected significantly from pretreatment crowding values.