Efficacy of clear aligners in correcting anterior open bite-a systematic review

Abstract

Objective:The aim was to systematically search the literature and assess the available evidence regarding theclinical effectiveness of clear aligners in correcting anterior open bite. Materials and Methods:PubMed, PubMed Central, MEDLINE, Embase, National Library of Medicine, Cochrane Library, Web of Knowledge, and LILACS were searched electronically to identify all peerreviewed articles till date potentially relevant to the review.The reference lists of all eligible articles were examined for additional studies. Additional manual search was also conducted in many orthodontic journals of interest, and unpublished articles were also searched for. To rate the methodological quality of the selected articles, a grading system described by the Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care was used. Results:Ten relevant articles were selected to be included in this systematic review. According to the SBU tool, among the selected studies, the methodological quality was moderate for four studies and limited for the others. Thus, conclusions with a limited level of evidence could be arrived at from the review process. The most recurrent sources of bias were related to the study design, lack of blinding procedure, the sample size, and the lack of control group. However, there was substantial consistency among studies that clear aligner therapy is a viable option to correct anterior open-bite. Conclusion:No definite conclusion could be derived due to the heterogeneity of the studies. Due to the limitations of this study, further clinical and experimental research is needed to statistically assess long-term stability of occlusion and skeletal relationships in treated open-bite cases.