A radiographic comparison of apical root resorption after orthodontic treatment with 3 different fixed appliance techniques.
Apical root resorption is an undesirable, but frequent side effect of orthodontic treatment, and therefore improvements in orthodontic techniques and materials are in constant development to decrease it. One of the most recently developed orthodontic techniques is the Bioefficient Therapy that uses contemporary orthodontic materials. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to compare the amount of root resorption after orthodontic treatment between the simplified standard edgewise technique (group 1), the edgewise straight wire system (group 2), and the Bioefficient Therapy (group 3). It was also the purpose of this investigation to evaluate the amount of root resorption in the whole sample studied and the prevalence of root resorption in the upper and lower incisors. Thus, periapical radiographs were obtained with the long cone paralleling technique for the upper and lower incisors from 30 patients for each group. Root resorption was ranked by scores by 2 examiners who had an excellent intra and interexaminer calibration by Kendall concordance coefficient. Results of the Kruskal-Wallis test demonstrated that group 3 (Bioefficient Therapy) presented less root resorption than the others. It was speculated that the factors responsible for the lesser resorption in this technique were the use of heat-activated and superelastic wires with the bracket design in this technique as well as the use of a smaller rectangular stainless steel wire (0.018 x 0.025 inch) in a 0.022 x 0.028 inch slot during incisor retraction and the finishing stages, as compared to the other techniques. Considering the whole sample, there was no root resorption in 2.25% of the analyzed teeth. There was only a slight resorption in 42.56%, a moderate resorption in 53.37%, an accentuated resorption in 1.40% and an extreme root resorption in only 0.42% of the teeth. The prevalence of resorption for each incisor indicated, in decreasing order, a greater resorption for the upper centrals, followed by the upper laterals, lower centrals, and lastly the lower lateral incisors.