The Acceleration Of Tooth Movement: A Review

There is a rising influx of adult patients seeking orthodontic treatment in the recent era.20-25% of orthodontic patients are reported to be adults and this trend is likely to rise by leaps and bounds in near future in view of society becoming more esthetic and health conscious. Unfortunately, long orthodontic treatment time poses several disadvantages like higher predisposition to caries, gingival recession, root resorption and enamel demineralization. Hence it is imperative to explore and understand various aspects to reduce the orthodontic treatment time, to counteract the side effects of prolonged treatment and reduce the irritation among adult patients. This review discusses various ways to accelerate the orthodontic tooth movement and what are the most viable options amongst those. Also it emphasizes on the advantages & disadvantages posed by these different techniques. Biological, physical and surgical techniques were discussed along with their pros and cons. Prostaglandins, relaxin and vitamin D showed lesser promising use on humans, because most of the work done is on animals. Lower laser irradiation therapy was found to have more assuring results amongst the physical and mechanical ways. Surgical techniques though being most successful & widely used had the drawbacks of invasiveness & discomfort. Piezoincision is a less invasive surgical technique and hence has a lot of scope in future. Most of the methods discussed have been successfully proven to reduce treatment times by up to 70% .It was concluded that all these techniques offer efficacious results one way or the other as far as the acceleration of orthodontic tooth movement is concerned.