Effectiveness of dental monitoring system in orthodontics: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: Dental monitoring (DM) constitutes a recent technological advance for the remote monitoring of patients undergoing an orthodontic therapy. Especially in times of health emergency crisis, the possibility of relying on remote monitoring could be particularly useful. Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of DM in orthodontic care. Eligibility: Studies conducted on healthy patients undergoing orthodontic care where DM was applied, assessing a change in treatment duration, emergency appointments, in-office visits, orthodontic relapse, early detection of orthodontic emergencies and improvement of oral health status. Information sources: PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus were searched for publications until November 2022. Risk of bias: Quality assessment was performed with the STROBE Checklist. Data extraction: Data were extracted independently by two reviewers, and discrepancies were resolved with a third reviewer. Included studies: Out of 6887 records screened, 11 studies were included. Synthesis of results: DM implemented to the standard orthodontic care was found to significantly decrease the number of in-office visits by 1.68–3.5 visits and showed a possible trend towards improvement of aligner fit. Conversely, evidence does not support a reduction of treatment duration and emergency appointments. The assessment of the remaining variables did not allow any qualitative synthesis. Conclusions: This review highlighted that DM implemented to standard orthodontic care can significantly decrease the number of in-office visits and may potentially result in an improved aligner fit. Due to the low quality of most of the included studies and the heterogeneity of the orthodontic system where DM was applied, studies with different investigation team and rigorous methodology are advocated.