Orthodontic Pain and Patients’ Quality of Life: Patient Experiences and Provider Assessments

Objectives: To compare orthodontic pain and its Influence on quality of patient’s life as perceived by them with that assessed by their orthodontic care providers. Materials and Methods: It was crosses sectional study involving 75 patients attending the orthodontic clinic and14 orthodontic care providers from September to October 2010. Patients aged 16 and older, receiving fixed orthodontic treatments were included. Patients and orthodontists scored pain during different orthodontic procedures using a qualitative pain intensity scale which graded pain for different orthodontic procedures. Oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) was assessed by means of a 4-point likert scale to measure the influence of orthodontic treatment related pain on different aspects of life. Results: For change of consistency of diet (p=0.02) statistically significant difference was observed between mean ranks of patients and orthodontists. For pain during record taking, higher mean ranks were reported for patients aged between 20-30 years (p = 0.01) whereas for pain after separator placement, patients aged above 30 had higher mean ranks (p = 0.05). Conclusions: Orthodontists can accurately estimate the degree of pain their patients’ experience. Significant proportions of patients experience substantial degrees pain during the visits, subsequent to orthodontic visits and pain due to fixed orthodontic appliance therapy transiently affects patients’ OHRQoL.