Adult ortho

This was the question posed by Edinburgh specialist Robbie Lawson in his presentation at the British Orthodontic Conference in Edinburgh when he highlighted the high standard of outcomes delivered by specialists with digital set-ups and the lingual technique.

In a talk entitled Lingual orthodontics: overcoming the hurdles,Robbie outlined the obstacles which might impede the progress of newly certified lingual users: on the list were patient adaptation to speech difficulties and tongue sensitivity, oral health, cost, complexity and perceived outcome standards.

The only hurdle which has some limited basis, in his view, is adaptation. Robbie estimated that one in ten of his patients struggle for a while when their lingual brackets are first in place. Otherwise, he produced research which revealed the other perceived hurdles were ill-founded.

He said: “The daddy of reasons that clinicians might not choose lingual is the perception that it might not deliver such a good result as the labial technique.” But there were studies, he continued, which showed that lingual achieved “incredibly good accuracy.”