Buccolingual Inclination Control of Upper Central Incisors of Aligners: A Comparison with Conventional and Self-Ligating Brackets

Objective. The upper incisorstorque expression is essential for the orthodontic treatment accuracy.Various orthodontic devices areclaimedtohavedifferentinclinationcontrolcapacity.Thepurposeofthisretrospectivestudywastocomparetheradiographic buccolingualinclinationof upperincisorsinpatientstreatedwith three differentorthodontictechniques.Material andMethods. Conventional brackets (Victory, 3M), self-ligating appliances (Damon Q, Ormco), and aligners (Invisalign, Align Technology) were tested. Cephalometric data of 25 patients with similar skeletal and dental pretreatment parameters were collected for each technique.Position changesof upper centralincisorswere assessed with radiographic evaluationbefore and after therapy.Three different parameters were considered: 11∧SnaSnp, 11∧Ocl and I+ TVL. All variables were measured before (T0) and after (T1) treatmentandtheirvariationovertreatmentwasassessed.Results.Whenevaluatingangularmeasurements,11∧SnaSnpand11∧Ocl anglesshowedthehighestnumericvariationwithconventionalbrackets.Lowestvalueswerereportedwithaligners.However,the differences among various techniques were not significant for both angles (P>0.05). Also I+ TVL linear value variation did not showsignificantdifferencesamongthedifferentgroupstested(P>0.05).Conclusion.Conventionalmultibracketsapplianceshowed thehighestincisalpositionvariationsovertreatment,butthedifferencesamongvariousgroupswerenotsignificantlydifferent.