Abstract

*Aalok Y. Shukla, Dr. Rodrigo Sousa Uva, Hiten RH Patel

ABSTRACT

Telemedicine has emerged in mainstream clinical practice across multiple disciplines including general practice, dermatology and physiotherapy, due to the availability of economically acceptable technologies. As a branch of Telemedicine, Teledentistry services have sought to shift from Teleconsultation alone to Teleconsultation plus Remote treatment models, due to perceived costs and time saving possibilities for the consumer and health care provider. This is mostly applied in Orthodontics, the branch of dentistry concerned with the alignment of teeth. As so, a new commercially available Teleorthodontic platform was developed with the aim of increasing patient access with these treatments. Aim: to compare the patients’ perceived quality of care for remote orthodontic service (ROS) versus traditional in clinic orthodontic (TICO). Material and Methods: In this study, we evaluated the patient perceived quality of a remote orthodontic service (ROS) with clear aligners versus traditional in clinic orthodontic (TICO) care using accepted fixed appliances requiring manual adjustments. Both groups were surveyed to evaluate their perception of quality of care by evaluating the patients’ orthodontic treatment related responses (confidence, assessment, plan, design and treatment) by means of a questionnaire (Appendix I). Results: 21 ROS and 21 TICO patients were evaluated. The ROS group responded with higher satisfaction scores across all four categories measured compared to the TICO group. 76.2% (n=16) of the remote group and 47.6% (n=10) of in-clinic patients were confident that the respective type of approach would work for them, showing a marginally statistically significant association. Conclusions: Our study suggests patient acceptance and satisfaction for ROS, may be related to the increased involvement of the remote patient in the therapeutic process, with a more patient centred model. More investigation is needed to evaluate this further across to determine optimal parameters for this new model.