Background
The published literature represents the fundamental basis of any academic specialty, including orthodontics. Orthodontic research outputs provide useful insight into clinical and research priorities, which can help inform future research efforts and resource outputs. In recent years, the need for more patient-reported outcomes in orthodontic research has been highlighted.
Objectives
To identify the most common reported research subjects in orthodontics between 2013–23; (2) identify the main outcomes and types of study design associated with this research, including study design related to patient-reported outcomes; and (3) identify trends in this research activity based upon these findings.
Material and methods
A literature search was performed in a single electronic database (Scopus) to return all indexed publications with relevance to orthodontics published from 2013 to 2023. The 50 most-cited publications per year were then identified. Publication characteristics were extracted using a data collection sheet. Descriptive statistics including frequency distributions were calculated.
Results
A total of 14 397 publications were identified. Publications on orthodontic bonding made up 7.02% of all output, followed by materials (5.88%) and tooth movement (5.42%). Subsequent analysis of the most-cited publications per year revealed the most frequently published subjects were aligners (12.5%), orthodontic tooth movement (9.45%), and digital workflow (9.09%), and the most common study designs were in vitro (19.09%) and retrospective observational studies (15.45%). The most common outcome type was morphological features of malocclusion (26.9%). Conversely, patient-focused measures were only reported in 12.7% of studies.
Conclusions
Orthodontic research outputs are dynamic but do show consistent research interest in certain subjects. There is a predilection for the reporting of clinician-focused outcomes; whilst these have some value, more efforts should be focused on conducting rigorous and robust studies that include patient-reported outcomes.
Catherine Liu, Jadbinder Seehra, Martyn T Cobourne
Disease Category: Dentistry & oral health
Disease Name: Orthodontics
Age Range: Unknown
Sex: Either
Nature of Intervention: Any
- Systematic review of outcomes measured in trials
- Systematic review
A search was performed in the Scopus database using the following query string: TITLE-ABS-KEY (orthodont*) AND PUBYEAR > 2012 AND PUBYEAR < 2024 AND (LIMIT-TO
(DOCTYPE, ‘ar’)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, ‘j’)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, ‘DENT’)). This returned all indexed publications with relevance to orthodontics published in journals within the subject area of dentistry between 2013 and 2023 inclusive.