Analysis of Patient Questions Collected for the Establishment of Clinical Guidelines for the Treatment of Jaw Deformities

Abstract

The committee which is drawing up guidelines for the treatment of jaw deformities in the Japanese Society for Jaw Deformities carried out an investigation of patients with jaw deformities. The purpose of the present investigation was to collect and analyze the patient questions (PQs) for the treatment of jaw deformities from these patients.
We collected 316 answers from 136 patients (54 males and 82 females) who had visited for treatment one of the medical and/or dental institutions to which committee members belonged. According to the classification of PQs, the duration and timing of treatment was the most common question (23.1%), followed by postoperative course (19.6%), treatment methods (19.3%), complications or postoperative symptoms (12.7%), anticipated efficacy (9.8%), treatment policy (5.1%), cost of treatment (3.2%), pathogenesis (1.6%) and others (4.4%). PQs were collected systematically and ranged widely.
In the next step, this committee will select clinical questions based on these PQs and create a draft version of the clinical guideline for the treatment of jaw deformities by the GRADE system.