Comprehensive intermaxillary tooth width proportion of Bangkok residents

Preferences and Satisfaction Toward an Orthodontic Clinical App

OBJECTIVES

 To promote the development of professional orthodontic apps and to grow app engagement, many contributing factors should first be scrutinized. The main purpose of this research was to assess whether gap analysis facilitates strategic app design.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

 Gap analysis was first conducted to reveal users' preferences. Then, the OrthoAnalysis app was developed on an Android operating system using Java programming language. Finally, a self-administered survey was issued to 128 orthodontic specialists to assess their satisfaction toward usage of the app.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

 The content validity of the questionnaire was ascertained using an index of Item-Objective Congruence of more than 0.5. The reliability of the questionnaire was also analyzed with Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient (ɑ = 0.87).

RESULTS

 Besides the most important factor, "content," many issues were listed, and all were required to engage users. A strong and engaging app should show accurate, trustworthy, and practical clinical analysis that operates smoothly and fast with ease, along with a user-friendly, appealing, and trustworthy interface. In short, because of the preliminary gap analysis that was done to evaluate the potential app engagement power prior to app design, the result of the satisfaction assessment showed that nine traits including overall satisfaction were of high levels.

CONCLUSIONS

 Orthodontic specialists' preferences were assessed using gap analysis and an orthodontic app was designed and appraised. This article presents the orthodontic specialists' preferences and summarizes the process of achieving app satisfaction. Therefore, to create a clinical app with strong engagement power, a strategic initial plan using gap analysis can be recommended.

Agreement of the Newly Developed Moyers' Equations and Moyers' Tables

OBJECTIVE

 This study aimed to develop the Moyers' prediction equation to be used with tooth widths predicting app on smartphone.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

 Four equations were developed separately for sex and dental arches. Internal validation with Moyers' table was finished. External validation on 37 subjects with agreement test of both Moyers' prediction equations and Moyers' prediction tables was performed.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

 A general linear model procedure was used to create four prediction equations. Internal validation was evaluated using the coefficient of determination. External validation was performed using Bland and Altman (BA) test.

RESULTS

 Four equations were developed for OrthoAnalysis app on smartphone. The overall coefficient of determination of all equations and prediction table was 0.998 (p < 0.05) indicating good agreement of the two methods. The agreement test on the 37 subjects was that the BA test revealed the BA limits of agreement between the residuals of two predictions was -0.001 mm and ranged from -0.143 to 0.140 mm with almost all plots lying inside this difference interval.

CONCLUSIONS

 In summary, four novel estimation equations were developed and showed very low difference to the well accepted original Moyers' prediction tables. Therefore, the equations used in the orthodontic app for predicting unerupted tooth width were verified and valid for clinical use.

Agreement test of P value versus Bayes factor for sample means comparison: analysis of articles from the Angle Orthodontist journal

BACKGROUND

Researchers are cautioned against misinterpreting the conventional P value, especially while implementing the popular t test. Therefore, this study evaluated the agreement between the P value and Bayes factor (BF01) results obtained from a comparison of sample means in published orthodontic articles.

METHODS

Data pooling was undertaken using the modified PRISMA flow diagram. Per the inclusion criteria applied to The Angle Orthodontist journal for a two-year period (November 2016 to September 2018), all articles that utilised the t test for statistical analysis were selected. The agreement was evaluated between the P value and Bayes factor set at 0.05 and 1, respectively. The percentage of agreement and Kappa coefficient were calculated. Plotting of effect size against P value and BF01 was analysed.

RESULTS

From 265 articles, 82 utilised the t test. Of these, only 37 articles met the inclusion criteria. The study identified 793 justifiable t tests (438 independent-sample and 355 dependent-sample t tests) for which the agreement percentage and Kappa coefficient were found to be 93.57% and 0.87, respectively. However, when anecdotal evidence (1/3 < BF01 < 3) was considered, almost half of the studies missed statistical significance. Furthermore, two-thirds of the significantly reported P values (0.01 < P < 0.05; 30 independent-sample and 20 dependent-sample t tests) showed only anecdotal evidence (1/3 < BF01 < 1). Moreover, BF01 indicated moderate evidence (BF01 > 3) for approximately one-third of the total studies, with nonsignificant P values (P > 0.05). Furthermore, accompanying the P values, the effect sizes, especially for studies with independent-sample t tests, were very high with a strong potential to show substantive significance. Although it is best to extend the statistical calculation of a doubted P value (just below 0.05), especially for orthodontic innovation, orthodontists may reach a balanced decision relying on cephalometric measurements.

CONCLUSIONS

The Kappa coefficient indicated perfect agreement between the two methods. BF01 restricted this judgement to approximately half of them, with two-thirds of these studies showing nonsignificant P values. Simple extensions of statistical calculations, especially effect size and BF01, can be useful and should be considered when finalising statistical analyses, especially for orthodontic studies without cephalometric analysis.

A systematic review and meta-analysis on Bolton's ratios: Normal occlusion and malocclusion

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this study was to seek and summarise the Bolton overall index (OI) and anterior index (AI) regarding normal occlusion and Angle's malocclusion according to gender, and to assess if these indices support Bolton's standards as general references.

METHODS

PubMed, LILACS, Embase, CENTRAL and Google Scholar databases were searched up to June 2019 (CRD42018088438). Non-randomised clinical studies, published in English and assessing Bolton's OI and/or AI in normal occlusion and Angle's malocclusion groups, were included. OI and AI means, sample size and SDs were collected. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Quality Assessment Tool for Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies was used to assess the risk of bias. Pairwise random-effects and multilevel Bayesian network meta-analyses were used to synthesise available data.

RESULTS

Fifty-three observational studies were included (11,411 participants; 3746 men, 4430 women; 15 studies lacked gender information). For normal occlusion, pooled estimates for OI and AI means were 91.78% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 91.42-92.14; I² = 92.87%) and 78.25% (95% CI = 77.87-78.62; I² = 90.67%), respectively. We could identify in Angle's Class III patients meaningful OI and AI mean deviations from normal occlusion (0.76, 95% credible interval [CrI] = 0.55-0.98 and 0.61, 95% CrI = 0.35-0.87, respectively), while in Class II patients we found a meaningful mean deviation from normal occlusion only for OI (-0.28, 95% CrI = -0.52--0.05). Concerning gender impact, male patients presented higher OI (0.30, 95% CI = 0.00-0.59) and AI (0.41, 95% CI = 0.00-0.83) mean values than female patients in Class I.

CONCLUSION

Normal occlusion OI and AI mean values differ from Bolton's original values. Class II division 2, for OI mean values, and Class III, for both OI and AI, are proportionally larger than normal occlusion patients. Gender had almost no impact on teeth mesiodistal proportion.

Orofacial pain and symptoms of temporomandibular disorders in Finnish and Thai populations

OBJECTIVE

Cultural or ethnic factors may play an important role in subjects' pain reports. The aim of the study was to compare the prevalence of orofacial pain symptoms between Finnish and Thai populations.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The Finnish study population comprised the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966, of which 5696 subjects participated in the present study. The Thai sample consisted of 1501 randomly selected people living in 10 different districts in Bangkok. Data on orofacial pain was collected based on questionnaires.

RESULTS

After adjusting for age, gender and education, the logistic regression analysis showed that Thai subjects had an increased risk for reporting oral pain (OR = 4.5, 95% CI = 3.7-5.4), tooth pain (OR = 2.0, 95% CI = 1.8-2.4) and pain in the face (OR = 1.5, 95% CI = 1.2-1.7).

CONCLUSIONS

It can be concluded that Thai people report more orofacial pain symptoms than Finnish subjects. Cross-cultural factors exist in the background of reporting pain symptoms in the oral and facial area.