Discussion
malocclusion
In the current study, the children took the same questionnaire a second time after 2–3 months to examine the effect of time on their perceptions. The time interval was selected to be 2–3 months since this was a period regarded as not long enough for the participant’s OHRQoL to alter considerably but long enough for the participants to forget their earlier replies.The COHIP-SF 19 form that was used in this study was validated and proven to be reliable in both its original English version [The findings of the current study presented no statistically significant differences in sex distribution among the three groups. This was advantageous because the results about the effect of sex on the subjects’ perceptions were mixed in previous studies. Thiruvenkadam et al. [General health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has often been reported to be higher in children than adolescents [Just after finishing the treatment (baseline assessment), the results of the present study indicated an important difference between the three groups, with the malocclusion group expressing the worst experience, followed by the Twin-Block group and then the fixed appliance group. At Two-months, compared to the fixed appliance group and the Twin-Block group, the malocclusion group had the worst quality of life, but the fixed appliance and the Twin-Block groups had similar quality of life although the scores were slightly higher in the fixed appliance group. Previous studies documented the psychological effect of malocclusion on patients’ quality of life [Just after finishing the treatment (the baseline assessment), patients in all groups had similar functional well-being, a situation that changed after two months, with the best functional well-being in the Twin-Block group followed by the fixed appliance group and then the malocclusion group. Looking at the socio-emotional well-being differences, they were obvious. The malocclusion group had the lowest scores both at the baseline and after two months in comparison to the other two groups. Just after finishing the treatment, patients in the fixed appliance group showed significantly higher scores than the Twin-Block group, which could be attributed to the nature of the appliance; removable vs. fixed appliance. Patients in the fixed appliance group might have been happier to realize that they are in the last stage of treatment and about to remove the appliance finally. After two months without the appliance, both the fixed appliance and functional appliance groups had similar socio-emotional well-being.In the present study, the findings of the malocclusion group were consistent with those of previous studies that showed that a great number of patients who required orthodontic treatments felt ashamed and inferior; the more the need for treatment, the greater the person’s humiliation [One of the limitations of the study is the inability to adhere to one gender or design different sex groups that would have been more insightful; however, the results showed no statistical difference in sex distribution among the groups. The same applies to age; it would have been better to have groups with no statistical age range differences; however, COHIP-SF 19 is suitable for a wide age range, as elaborated upon in the discussion section.