Audit on the standard of treatment currently provided

All patients are understandably keen to ensure that the standard of treatment they are receiving is of the highest standard. Hospitals now have to publish the results of the treatment they provide and we feel that we should do the same.

There are many ways of measuring treatment outcome but the most popular method over the past decade has been Peer Assessment Rating (PAR) Index. This index measures the various component parts of a malocclusion and then adds them all up to produce an overall malocclusion score. This is weighted in favour of the more significant malocclusion traits. It is then possible to produce a start and finish score for patients treated and then a percentage score reduction.

Using this weighted PAR Index, we measured 114 consecutively treated patients both before and after orthodontic treatment. The mean PAR score reduction was measured at 85.4%, which is one of the highest we could find amongst other published studies. 63% of patients fell into the category of “greatly improved”, 33% were “improved” and only 4% “worse of no better”. The latter were all patients who did not complete treatment. These results reassure us that the standard of treatment we provide is very high.