The community and orthodontic care Part I: community-perceived need and demand for orthodontic treatment

Abstract

A professionally managed telephone survey was undertaken to assess communily-perceived need and demand for orthodontic treatment, and to determine the proportion of the communily with a history of having some form of orthodontic treatment. The sample included 505 respondents, aged eighteen and over, from metropolitan and non-metropolitan households across the state of Victoria in Australia The sample distribution hod a ninely-five per cent confidence limit with a five per cent margin of error, and closely matched the known population distributions for age, sex and geographical location. From the survey it can be concluded that apparently forly-four per cent of Victorian families include someone who has already received some form of orthodontic treatment. Twenly-five per cent of the survey respondents perceived some need for the treatment of a family member; only fifteen per cent of respondents, however, reported that someone in their family actually wanted treatment. This survey has established baseline values for communily-perceived need and demand for orthodontic treatment. Use of these values should assist in future resource management within both the public and private sectors.