Locus of control of surgical-orthodontic patient

Lee, Shin Jae; Ahn, Sug Joon; Baek, Seung Hak; Kim, Tae Woo; Chang, Young Il; Yang, Won Sik; Suhr, Cheong Hoon; Nahm, Dong Seok

Abstract

Surgical-orthodontic treatment is an increasingly more common dental procedure whose unique psycho-social or psychological feature has not been fairly quantified objectively. Since the treatment of a surgical-orthodontic (or orthodontic) patient is part science and part art, a subjective recognition of a patient about his or her own treatment may be more important than technical success during and after treatment. Therefore, the knowledge of the patient's underlying psychological status could be useful in the prediction of patient's response to surgical-orthodontic (or orthodontic) treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate and evaluate the psychological difference between conventional orthodontic patient and surgical-orthodontic patient by using locus of control (LOC) examination. Locus of control scale has been proven to be extremely useful in the prediction of a variety of human behaviors. Two types of locus of control data (I-score, Internal locus of control score; E-score, External locus of control score) were obtained for 42 surgical-orthodontic patients and randomly selected 42 conventional orthodontic patients (as a control group) matched for age and gender. No statistically significant difference was observed in the scale of internal and external locus of control between the groups of surgical-orthodontic patients and conventional orthodontic patients. However, in the group of surgical-orthodontic patients, males showed lower E-score (external locus of control score, higher internal locus of control tendency) than females. The results of this study suggested that the psychological background of surgical-orthodontic patients, in contrast with that of cosmetic surgery patients, has a similar disposition with that of orthodontic patients.