COMPARISON OF DURATION OF LEVELING AND ALIGNING IN DIFFERENT TYPES OF CROWDING IN LOWER ANTERIORS

Abstract

Alignment and leveling of teeth generally constitute the most important preliminary clinical phase of any orthodontic treatment with fixed appliances. Leveling is the process in which the incisal edges of the anterior teeth and the buccal cusps of the posterior teeth are placed on the same horizontal level; and alignment is the lining up of teeth of an arch in order to achieve normal contact point relationships.The aim of the present study is to compare duration of leveling, aligning of different types of crowding in patients presented with lower anterior crowding. We reviewed 500 case sheets among which 60 case sheets were selected which included an equal number of patients with mild, moderate and severe crowding and duration for leveling and aligning were recorded and exported to excel sheets then the data is analysed statistically using SPSS software. From the results it is shown that the majority of the mild crowding cases were levelled and aligned within a span of 6 months followed by moderate crowding, 28% of the cases showed to attain desired results within 8 months and in case of severe crowding it ranged between 1-1.5 years.