Teleorthodontic treatment with clear aligners: An analysis of outcome in treatment supervised by general practitioners versus orthodontic specialists

The objective of this study was to assess the clinical effectiveness of teleorthodontic treatment with clear aligners on maxillary and mandibular incisor alignment utilizing the SmileDirectClub® teleorthodontic platform, to objectively measure differences in clinical effectiveness between treatment supervised by general practitioners versus orthodontic specialists and to subjectively consider patient satisfaction after the teleorthodontic delivery of clear aligner treatment and the relationship between satisfaction and whom the treatment was provided by. A sample of 50 patients determined by inclusion and exclusion criteria were randomly selected from an initial sample of 200 patients. The pre and posttreatment maxillary and mandibular arch stereolithography (STL) files taken from the iTero digital scans were imported into computer software for measurement. Point to point millimetric measurement of crowding or spacing was measured from the distal of one maxillary or mandibular lateral incisor to the distal of the opposite lateral incisor on the pre and posttreatment models. Lastly, the subjective measure of patient satisfaction was tabulated for each patient. General linear models found treatment effectiveness to achieve statistical significance in the multivariate tests conducted. There was no statistically significant difference between treatment supervised by general practitioners versus orthodontic specialists. Lastly, Fisher’s exact test determined that there was no significant association between satisfaction and who the respondent was treated by. *Correspondence to: Marc B Ackerman, American Teledentistry Association, 9 Roberts Road, Wellesley Hills, MA, USA, Tel: 1-781-304-4409; E-mail: admin@americanteledentistry.org