Assessment of Factors Influencing Orthodontic Patient Cooperation

The present study aims at evaluating the cooperation of orthodontic patients and at finding the factors that influence treatment compliance. The retrospective study was conducted on 136 patients of several orthodontic practices in Iasi, Romania, between 2019 and 2021. The patients included in the study were children and adults wearing mobile or fixed orthodontic appliances, in different treatment stages. For each patient, evaluation was done at each monthly appointment and the cooperation score was calculated at 12 months from the start of the treatment. 27.9% of patients were very cooperative, 34.6% of patients were cooperative, 24.3% of patients were neutral, 11.0% of patients were uncooperative and 2.2% of patients were extremely uncooperative. The resulting cooperation scores were correlated with the characteristic parameters of the patient's profile (age, gender, residential location, education level, economic status, diagnosis and type of treatment). Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 29.0 (IBM Corp.). Statistically significant correlations were observed with gender, educational level of the patients/their parents and diagnosis of the malocclusions (dental and skeletal class) (p<0.05). In conclusion, patient cooperation was generally positive regarding orthodontic treatment, and the factors that influenced treatment compliance were specific to this study group.