Dental esthetic satisfaction, received and desired dental treatments for improvement of esthetics.
OBJECTIVE
The purposes of this research were to investigate factors influencing patients' satisfaction with their present dental esthetic, received previous dental treatments on anterior teeth and basic treatments that they wanted to undergo to improve their dental appearance.


METHODS
A total of 1014 patients who attended a dental school in a major city in Turkey participated in the study. The participants were surveyed with a questionnaire containing questions about gender, age, education level, self-reported tooth appearance, received previous dental treatments on anterior teeth and desired basic esthetic dental treatments. Statistical analysis of the verifying data was made with descriptive statistics, chi2 test and multiple logistic regression analyses.


RESULTS
According to the analyses of the verifying data, 55.1% of the patients were dissatisfied with the color of their teeth, 42.7% with dental appearance, 29.9% with crowding of anterior teeth, 23.3% were hiding teeth while smiling, 16.1% had non-esthetic restorations and 11.9% thought that their anterior teeth were protruding. Esthetic restoration was found to be the most-performed treatment recently (29.0%) and whitening of teeth was the most-desired dental treatment (49.0%). Gender, age and education level had an effect on satisfaction and received previous and desired dental treatments for improvement of esthetics.


CONCLUSIONS
Many of the Turkish patients surveyed in the study were dissatisfied and desired the improvement of dental esthetics. Therefore, dentists should consider this as an important dimension in their practice.
Akarslan
Zühre Zafersoy
ZZ
Department of Oral Diagnosis and Radiology, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey. dtzuhre@yahoo.com
Sadik
Burak
B
Erten
Hüya
H
Karabulut
Erdem
E
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003729:Dental Care; D017266:Dental Prosthesis / Q000523:psychology; D003793:Dental Restoration, Permanent / Q000523:psychology; D004522:Educational Status; D004955:Esthetics, Dental; D005260:Female; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008310:Malocclusion / Q000523:psychology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009971:Orthodontics, Corrective / Q000523:psychology; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D012390:Root Canal Therapy / Q000523:psychology; D012649:Self Concept; D012737:Sex Factors; D012904:Smiling / Q000523:psychology; D014073:Tooth Bleaching / Q000523:psychology; D014075:Tooth Discoloration / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult