Birte Melsen: How has the spectrum of orthodontics changed over the past decades?

The Journal of Orthodontics of this month has invited Prof. DrOdont, B.Melsen from the university of Aarhus Denmark, to write an article about orthodontics today.


This article is in a form of a lecture. Dr. Melsen talks about almost every aspect of orthodontics today.


From "fast food orthodontics", self-ligating, "intelligent wires and brackets", "no bending orthodontics" to individualized treatments for adults with periodontal and degenerative diseases. TADs and digital orthodontics (digital casts, computerized treatment planing) are a field of interest for the future, and push the limits of orthodontics according to Prof Melsen.


Along the caustic comments about the industry, the marketing of new wires and brackets, it is reminded to everyone, that orthodontics is all about treatment planning and goals orientation. There is no cook book in orthodontics, and this article is certainly worth of your time.

AJODO, Point and Counterpoint.

When a new editor takes over a journal usually there's changes following. The fairly new editor of the American Journal Dr. Vincent Kokich is certainly putting an efford to introduce new features to the journal and its readers.

One of those features is the Point - Counterpoint section, that consists of two articles on the same topic analyzing it from different prospectives. The idea is very interesting and clinically orientated as well, as this kind of controversial topics usually come from decisions that clinicians have to make over a dilemma of some sort.

For those of you who are not aware of this new section at the AJODO this month's edition hosts two articles concerning congenital missing lateral incisors. This is a topic that Dr Kokich has been involved with for years.

Distally displaced premolars: A dental anomaly associated with palatally displaced canines, AmJO-DO Sept 2010

Dr Tiziano Baccetti, of Florence Italy, is one of the not so many, clinicians and researchers, that thrive to finding useful clinical tools for diagnosis. One of them is the widelly used cervical vertebrae maturation stage. The CVS as it is called, is a method of assesing where considering the growth spur, our orthodontic patients are, through the vertebrae that are visible on the lateral cephalogram, that we already have among our initial registrations.

Dr Baccetti comes with another suggestion, on the AmJO-DO of Sept 2010. The hypothesis of been able to early diagnose palatally displaced maxillary canines, from assessing the distal displacement of the second mandibular premolars. This is the link to the original article's abstract on the American Journal.

An alternative to space retention, for agenesia patients.

Case presentation:

 

Patient L.R. 15y.o. after active treatment, agenesia of 22, space created for an implant on that region. The patient is in adolescence and the implant will be placed after growth has ceased completely at the age of 19-20. The temporary prosthetic rehabilitation of an agenesia space is an important issue especially in cases of lateral(s) missing

Postorthodontic root approximation after opening space for maxillary lateral incisor implants

This is one of the most common implications - problem after successfully treating a lateral incisor(s) agenesia patient. Treatments are usually quite lengthy but also carried out sometimes a bit earlier in the patients life.