Aspects Regarding the Medical Data Processing - The Statistical Study of Malocclusions

An important aspect in the analysis of medical data is represented by it's statistical processing, which gives useful directions in finding the diagnosis and the most adequate treatment, especially when the amount of statistical data is very large and it is in time extended. We gave an example in this paper, by presenting a statistical evaluation on a consignment of patients who have addressed the Dental Ambulatory for Children (Iaşi) for orthodontic consulting over a period of 10 years (2000 – 2010). The study has been performed on 375 patients (157 boys and 218 girls), with ages between 4-24 years and malocclusions. The diagnosis was established by clinical and paraclinical exams (cast and radiological measurements). Both removable and fixed appliances were used in conducting the treatment. The patients in need of orthodontic treatment presented malocclusion Ist Class 63.2%, II-nd Class 28.3%, and III-rd Class 5.8%. The group and isolated malocclusion proportion varied on the basis of the clinical manifestations associated to the malocclusion class. Based on age, the patients were applied with prophylactic treatment 3%, interceptive treatment 5% and curative 92%. The Spearman correlations performed on the batch of patients proved the existence of a weak directly proportional influence between the diagnosis of malocclusion and the therapeutic results (rho = 0.136, p = 0.008), respectively the surgical – orthodontic treatment and the therapeutic results (rho = 0.235, p = 0.000), a strong directly proportional influence of the type of appliance over the therapeutic results (rho = 0.635, p = 0.000) and a moderate inverse proportional influence of the treatment chosen to be carried out over the therapeutic results (rho = -0.306, p = 0.000). The results regarding prevalence of malocclusion types are comparable with those from the literature. The correlations that were carried out were based on medical reasoning. All these results are useful to depict the general characteristics of the Dental Ambulatory’s potential patients and, as a consequence, to easily establish the most accurate treatment.