The Socio-Demographic Evaluation of Patients that Discontinue Orthodontic Treatment

This study aims to define the general profile of the patients who were started to treat and then gave up their treatment. In addition we also aim to take the precautions in accordance with the results. To carry out the study, information cards of 42 patients who gave up their treatments between 2001 and 2003 were used. The mean age of girls who gave up the treatment is 14.5 and that of the boys is 12.4. It is seen that there is no statistically significant difference between the ages and gender of the patients (p>0.05). When we looked at the duration of the patients waited for being taken into treatment, there was no difference between the male and female patients (P>0.05)and the average duration was seen to be 9.28 months. 81%of the patients waited for less than one year and 19%of them waited for more than one year. On contrary to the expectations, the duration of waiting for treatment's getting longer has a positive effect, not a negative one. It is easier to accept the negative effects of treatment for the patients who have to wait for a certain amount of time for treatment.