Angle Lecture: Changing Treatment Goals to Confront Reality

With designation as an orthodontic specialist, we have inherited the need to know how to acquire, evaluate and disseminate scientific facts. From the beginning we have accepted this challenge, but the mechanisms by which we acquire, assess, and transfer knowledge have changed considerably over the past century. In this presentation, I will relate the use of evidence to the current practice of orthodontics and will suggest how we can evaluate the effectiveness of “faster treatment” promotions. Do you have access to the evidence needed to assure your next patient they are really benefiting from the latest technological finding? Or is it more mythical than scientific? While much of the information mentioned will be familiar to our recently trained orthodontists, those of us graduating more than 15 years ago have witnessed a real revolution in producing, accessing, and utilizing orthodontic literature.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize whether or not faster treatment techniques have achieved significance.
• Demonstrate how to search and evaluate follow-up studies to determine whether or not the high bar of clinical significance is reached.
• Determine if the latest technique to speed treatment become productive in their office.