Once may be enough
Parents, brace yourselves. If you had your child’s prominent front teeth treated in two stages -- early, then again in adolescence -- it likely wasn’t any more effective than having it done in one fell swoop at adolescence.
In an analysis of data from eight studies that included 592 patients from five countries who had been treated for prominent front teeth, Kevin O’Brien, a professor of orthodontics at the University of Manchester in England, and lead author Jayne Harrison, a U.K. orthodontist, compared the two strategies and found no meaningful difference in outcome between groups of children who were treated in one as opposed to two phases.
In fact, “if early treatment was provided, the child had to wear braces for longer overall, and the treatment was therefore more expensive,” O’Brien said in an e-mail.
There is another factor, though, that parents might want to consider. “Parents should seek an orthodontist’s advice if the child is being badly teased,” said O’Brien, as the improvement in appearance from early treatment does appear to provide a short-term boost to the child’s self-esteem.
The study appears in the current issue of the Cochrane Library, a collection of databases published by an international organization that evaluates healthcare research.
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