UCSF

Introduction: It is important to achieve proper root position during orthodontic treatment involving future dental implant placement. However, current methods to evaluate root position are either inaccurate or expose patients to relatively high levels of radiation. A new approach using an expected root position (ERP) setup has previously demonstrated the potential to accurately monitor root position with minimal radiation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the ERP setup is an accurate and reliable method to determine if the roots adjacent to an edentulous site are appropriate for the anticipated dental implant.Methods: In this retrospective study, the ERP setup was generated for 22 edentulous sites selected from the UCSF Division of Orthodontics patient database. The mesiodistal angulation of all teeth adjacent to the edentulous sites and the mesiodistal space between the teeth were measured in the ERP setup and compared to that of the post-treatment CBCT scan, which served as the control. The intra-operator and inter-operator reliability and agreement between the ERP setup and the post-treatment CBCT scan were assessed using Bland-Altman analysis. The correlation between measurements was further evaluated by the Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Both the Bland-Altman plots and the Pearson correlation coefficient displayed strong agreement between the ERP setup and the post-treatment CBCT scan with only 11.4% mesiodistal angulation measurements beyond the clinically acceptable range of ±2.5°. All mesiodistal angulations and distances were strongly correlated with high intra-operator and inter-operator reliabilities. Conclusion: The method to generate an ERP setup to evaluate the mesiodistal angulation and space of an edentulous site prepared for a future dental implant has been demonstrated to be accurate and reliable.