Surgical-orthodontic treatment is an increasingly more common dental procedure whose unique psycho-social or psychological feature has not been fairly quantified objectively. Since the treatment of a surgical-orthodontic (or orthodontic) patient is part science and part art, a subjective recognition of a patient about his or her own treatment may be more important than technical success duringg and after treatment. Therefore, the knowledge of the patient´s underlying psychological status could be useful in the~prediction of patient´s response to surgical-orthodontic (or orthodontic) treatment.
The purpose of this study was to investigate and evaluate the psychological difference between conventional orthodontic patient and surgical-orthodontic patient by using locus of control (LOO) examination. Locus of control scale has been proven to be extremely useful in the, prediction of a variety of human behaviors, Two types of locus of control data (I-score, Internal locus of control score ; E-score, External locus of control score) were obtained for 42 surgical -orthodontic patients and randomly selected 42 conventional orthodontic patients (as a control group) matched for age and gender.
No statistically significant difference was observed in the scale of internal and external locus of control between the groups of surgical-orthodontic patients and conventional orthodontic patients. However, in the group of surgicalorthodontic patients; males showed lower E-score (external locus of control score, higher internal locus of control tendency) than females. The results of this study suggested that the psychological background of surgical-orthodontic patients, in contrast with that of cosmetic surgery patients, has a similar disposition with that of orthodontic patients.
|