Adults – permanent dentition
Image adapted from Freestock
Adult patients are increasingly seeking orthodontic treatment. Their usual motivation is to improve their dental appearance, however other reasons such as adjunctive orthodontics to facilitate restorative or periodontal treatment, combined surgical correction or the combined management of airway issues such as obstructive sleep apnea may be possible.
Orthodontic care in adults can be increasingly complex often due to an incomplete dentition, the presence of periodontitis or a heavily restored dentition. Their teeth may be in a complex malocclusions as teeth will continue to drift many decades into life and will also be subject to soft tissue forces and skeletal changes. An adult’s skeletal growth can be considered complete however caution must be given to the vertical (dolichocephalic) and Class III hyperplastic mandibular growers as these growth patterns can often continue into the late twenties and early thirties. For these patients, comprehensive treatment should be delayed until specialist assessments have shown no further growth.
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