Upper bonded retainer failures, AngO ahead of print

The Angle Orthodontist, at it's online ahead of print, has published an interesting retrospective study of Dr Sabine Ruf of Giessen University, Germany.

466 consecutive upper bonded retainers were checked and surprisingly a 58.2% of the patients experienced failures of their retainer.

Click to enlarge

Now that's plain a lot. Looking at the graph above:

• The retainers that fail at the first 6 months are due to detachments. The incidents of detachment reduce over-time.
• The complete loss of the retainer has more or less the same probability of happening over-time.
• Lastly the fracture of the retainer, as expected is something that happens more often after a year or two.

Abstract link

D.G.