A qualitative twitter analysis of the patient experience with invisible orthodontics; lingual braces versus invisalign

Objectives: The aim of this qualitative study was to examine orthodontic patients’ thoughts and experiences about the invisible orthodontic treatment options – lingual braces and Invisalign – through the analysis of Twitter posts’ content. Materials and Methods: A software program was written for the data collection. The program consecutively collected the tweets posted over an 8-month period from Twitter’s publicly accessible database. Tweets that were written in the English language and contained any of the four keywords “Invisalign,” “lingualorthodontics,” “lingualbraces,” and “invisiblebraces” were collected. The tweets that included irrelevant or incoherent posts, professional advertisements, unclear/not applicable content, and reposts were excluded from the study. Two authors, with different experiences, independently read, and analyzed the tweets. Each applicable tweet was classified into one of the three categories: Positive, negative, and neutral for two study groups (Invisalign and lingual braces). Pearson Chi-square test was used to analyze the negative and positive tweet rates of the groups. Results: 1176 of 2407 tweets were selected as applicable and analyzed by the authors. There was a statistically significant very good agreement between the two observers (Kappa = 0.933, P < 0.001). The negative comment rate (39%) and neutral comment rate (31.1%) in the lingual group were statistically higher than the Invisalign group (27.2% and 21.7%, respectively; P < 0.001). The positive comment rate in the Invisalign group was significantly higher (51.1%) compared to the lingual group (29.9%, P < 0.001). Conclusion: Orthodontic patients use social media to share their experiences and feelings about their treatment process. The applicable Tweet number and the positive Tweet rate in the Invisalign group were higher than the lingual braces group.

FEATURES OF ORTHODONTIC TREATMENT USING LINGUAL BRACES

Malocclusion and imperfect placement of teeth can have a big impact on the smile, well-being and quality of life. As a result of the treatment of pathological and abnormal bite, many children and adults are forced to use braces to improve their bite. The consequences of treatment are different: inflammation and itching, edema of the oral mucosa and maxillary sinuses, headaches, fever. All this depends on the human physiological characteristics, as well as adaptation to this artificial structure, which actually shifts the teeth from a pathological position to a physiological one. Correcting the bite with lingual braces has a key advantage. The main thing is the ability to cope with the psychological barrier that inevitably arises when wearing vestibular braces. But there is also a disadvantage that manifests itself in a short-term speech disorder for 2-3 months. This article discusses the procedure for making lingual braces, the stages and principles of installing lingual braces, recommendations for the care and wearing of the structure, as well as the impact of these braces on the speech apparatus and articulation of speech sounds and the possible development of logoneurosis due to treatment with lingual braces.

The quality of Internet information on lingual orthodontics in the English language, with DISCERN and JAMA

Objectives: This study investigated the quality of Internet information in the English language about lingual orthodontics. Design: A cross-sectional study Materials and Methods: An Internet search using the keywords ‘lingual orthodontics’, ‘lingual braces’, ‘lingual treatment’ and ‘lingual brackets’ was conducted on the four most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL) on 4 February 2017. The first 10 websites for each keyword and search engine were screened. After excluding duplicates and irrelevant websites, the remaining were assessed using the DISCERN tool and JAMA benchmarks. Results: Of the original 160 websites found, 132 were excluded (102 duplicates, 30 unrelated). The authors of the remaining 28 websites were orthodontists (39.2%), professional organisations (21%), unspecified (17.8%), dentists (7.1%), dental hygienists (7.1%) and patients (7.1%). The mean overall DISCERN score for the 28 websites was poor (36.3). Only 1/28 websites met all four principles of JAMA, four websites met three criteria, 10 websites met two criteria and 13 websites met one criterion. Conclusion: Online information on lingual orthodontics was of poor quality; moreover, unbiased and balanced information was rare. Orthodontists should be aware that the average quality of information on the Internet about lingual orthodontics might be inadequate and should direct patients to higher-quality websites.

Lingual orthodontic treatment: A YouTube™ video analysis

ABSTRACT Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the quality of information offered for patients seeking information on lingual orthodontic treatment. Materials and Methods: YouTube™ was searched for videos about lingual orthodontic treatment using the key word “lingual braces” from the Google Trends application. One hundred and four videos were selected to be analyzed from the first 120 results. The video content was evaluated using a 10-point score, which was used for classifying low- and high-content video groups. The video information and quality index (VIQI) was applied to determine the quality of the videos. The Mann-Whitney U-test, Chi-square test, and logistic regression analysis were used, and the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for statistical evaluations. Results: We classified 32 videos as high-content and 72 as low-content. Most videos were uploaded by laypeople (58.7%, n = 61). Definition of lingual braces and psychological impact were the most commonly discussed topics (51.0%), followed by speech performance (47.1%), pain (44.2%), tongue soreness (37.5%), and biomechanics (14.4%). Compared to the low-content group, the high-content video group had a significantly higher mean number of views (19,867.41 vs 6720.08, P = .002) and more “likes” (135.88 vs 13.01, P &lt; .001), “dislikes” (4.34 vs 0.81, P &lt; .001), and “comments” (26.28 vs 5.31, P = .002). There was no difference in the total VIQI score between the groups (P = .009). Conclusions: The content of YouTube™ videos for lingual orthodontics was generally incomplete. Most videos mentioned psychological effects, but few videos discussed the biomechanics or procedure. Orthodontists should be aware of the information available on YouTube™.