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EFFICACY OF TEMPORARY FIXED RETENTION FOLLOWING ...

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CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSION<br />

Relapse—a return towards pretreatment conditions—seems to plague<br />

most orthodontic cases to some degree. Similar to the aging process, it is difficult<br />

to predict the extent to which an individual case will relapse. On more than one<br />

occasion, Gerald Samson (personal communication, February 2009; May, 2010)<br />

has said that “As the process of aging progresses, the skin wrinkles and so do<br />

teeth.” Put another way, “The dentition constantly changes throughout life”<br />

(Horowitz and Hixon 1969, p 3). To stop orthodontic relapse is akin to stopping<br />

the aging process. Because posttreatment relapse occurs to some degree in all<br />

patients, evaluations of the efficacy and rationale of various methods aimed at<br />

prevention are valuable.<br />

Lysle Johnston (1993) has asserted that orthodontic treatment may be<br />

more stable than had previously been documented. He challenged the specialty<br />

to produce other samples and treatments to be subjected to long-term scrutiny.<br />

To date, the vast majority of research concerning long-term stability has come<br />

from the Department of Orthodontics at the University of Washington (reviewed<br />

in Little and Sinclair 2009). The present research intends to provide additional<br />

insight into the long-term stability of treated patients. The nature of the present<br />

sample (Harris 1985) is that (a) cases are evaluated long-term (≥ 10 years after<br />

debanding), (b) cases were treated in private practice, and (c) all cases were<br />

treated using standard edgewise mechanics (Sandusky and Gramling 1988).<br />

The two-fold intent of this study was to determine whether the type of<br />

retention—either Hawley retainers alone or Hawleys in combination with a fixed<br />

lingual retainer—provided greater long-term stability, and to compare the<br />

findings of this study to other long-term outcomes. This was a cast analysis<br />

where records were gathered before (T1), after (T2), and at least 10 years (T3)<br />

following the active phase of orthodontic treatment. A strength of this study is<br />

the large sample size of 166 patients, of whom 69 received a maxillary Hawley<br />

retainer in combination with either a fixed mandibular canine-to-canine or first<br />

premolar to first premolar retainer, and the other 97 received maxillary and<br />

mandibular Hawley retainers. Mandibular fixed retainers were removed on<br />

average 2 to 3 years after the end of treatment, after which no mandibular<br />

retention was used, and the duration of maxillary retainer wear was left up to the<br />

discretion of the patient.<br />

Retention is the phase of orthodontic treatment that attempts to keep teeth<br />

in their corrected positions following active tooth movement with orthodontic<br />

braces (Littlewood et al. 2006). The intent of Hawley retainers is to hold the teeth<br />

in their end-of-treatment positions yet allowing them to passively settle into their<br />

115

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