Impacts on daily performances attributed to malocclusions by British adolescents

Summary  The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of condition-specific impacts on daily performances attributed to malocclusion in British adolescents. Two hundred 16- to 17-year-old adolescents were randomly selected from 957 children attending a public college in London, UK. During interviews, participants provided information about demographic variables and socio-dental impacts on quality of life attributed to malocclusions, using the Condition-Specific form of the Oral Impacts on Daily Performances (CS-OIDP) index. Adolescents were also clinically examined using the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need. Statistical comparison by covariates was performed using chi-squared test and chi-squared test for trends. The prevalence of oral impacts on daily performances attributed to any oral condition was 26·5% whereas the prevalence of CS-OIDP attributed to malocclusion was 21·5%. There was no statistically significant difference by sex, age, ethnicity or orthodontic treatment status of schoolchildren in the prevalence of CS-OIDP attributed to malocclusion ( P  ≥ 0·243 for all cases). However, there was a linear trend for the prevalence of CS-OIDP attributed to malocclusion, by level of normative orthodontic treatment need ( P  = 0·042). The prevalence of such impacts increased from 16·8% for adolescents with no/slight need for orthodontic treatment, to 31·7% for those with definite need for orthodontic treatment. Although findings support the idea that malocclusion has physical, psychological and social effects on quality of life of these adolescents, the inconsistencies in findings between the self-reports of impacts of malocclusion and the assessment of normative needs highlight the shortcomings of using only clinical indexes to estimate orthodontic treatment needs.