A Comparison of Parental Satisfaction in the Quality of their Child’s Orthodontic Treatment by Orthodontists and Pedodontists

BACKGROUND The aim was to evaluate satisfaction of the parents of children who have undergone orthodontic treatment provided by their orthodontists and pediatric dentists in their private practice. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 412 parents were interviewed with the help of a questionnaire containing information such as demographic part, experience of braces, motives for orthodontic treatment, complications faced during the procedure and reasoning for satisfaction. Student's t-test was applied to analyze the results. The level of significance was set at P = 0.05. RESULTS A higher level of satisfaction was seen in parents of children treated by pedodontists (mean score of satisfaction = 0.752) when compared with those treated by orthodontists (mean score of satisfaction = 0.631) which was statistically significant. Parents of girl patients showed a higher mean score of satisfaction (1.021) when compared with those of boy patients (0.321), which was also statistically significant. CONCLUSION It can be concluded that the pedodontists performed orthodontic treatment to a similar standard as orthodontists, in fact they proved to be better in terms of patient care and behavior management as the parental satisfaction in the quality of orthodontic care was more with pediatric dentists than with orthodontists in this study.