Compliance is a vitally important component when it comes to your fixed and removable expander treatment plan success. With this thought in mind, making sure that you have looked at some of the different aspects of a successful expander treatment plan is vital, and ensuring your patients are compliant is essential for finishing cases while reducing revisions and refinement.
How to Measure Compliance with Your Treatment Plan Through Jack Screw Threads
Turning the expander can be a little tricky for a patient who has never done so before, so compliance isn’t always easy to measure; indeed, even patients who swear they’ve done the turns may be accidentally non-compliant due to turning in the wrong direction. Thus, measuring compliance is crucial, no matter how confident the patient is that they followed the treatment plan carefully.
Luckily, you can measure jackscrew threads to monitor compliance. At the start, the screw head will be at zero. However, each time you see an additional screw thread, this indicates that four turns were done. As such, if there are three screw threads visible, you can assume that twelve turns have been done.
Key Considerations
Always remember that you will always have a small amount of relapse, especially if the expanders are removables. You should also monitor the number of jackscrew threads that are visible from visit to visit. If the number of jackscrew threads doesn’t change between visits, it’s likely that the patient may not have been doing their turns.
However, it’s important to consider why expansion might be needed. Always check that:
- the palate is still vaulted
- the eruption planes are still there
- the upper arch is at least 50% wider than the lower arch
Get Professional Support Today
If your patient is struggling to remain compliant with their orthodontics treatment plan, there’s a good chance that finishing cases may take longer with more revisions and refinement. Luckily, if you need more support with finding the right treatment plan or training parents and patients on how to complete successful turns, contact our experts here at Straight Smile Solutions today