Final Thesis

Once in China, doctors received fees from their patients as long as they were in good health, but once the patients start getting sick, doctors will not receive fees anymore. It was the common sense that dictated this rule.

Nowadays, this logic seems less relevant, in fact the medical field oriented towards massive therapeutics.

Prevention and interception are neglected. Many orthodontists wait that all definitive teeth are to be evaluated and the treatment is mostly done with braces device after premolars avulsion in the case of dento-maxillary disharmony.

This approach is not good, yet long, complicated, expensive and burdensome for the patient and the society. A certain number of treatments could have been simplified and even avoided, in certain cases, is prior interception had been realised. Only good clinicians are efficient in this field, and unfortunately they are progressively disappearing and being replaced by technicians.

We should examine the child as early as possible and adapt a treatment to each patient, so we could include an interceptive period and a mechanical treatment between these two moments. A whole set of gestures could be applied allowing corrections. Therefore treatments could be avoided or shortened, trough interception which is by definition “the interruption of someone or something in progress before arrival”.

Therefore, why not treatment before reaching complications. Orthodontic interception is a therapeutic act, oftenly, the earliest to obtain a partial or total correction of a dysmorphosis or prevent its aggravation.

It is important to distinguish it from prevention (or prophylaxis) which is not the object of our subject.
Preventive orthodontics which consists of a set of implemented means to prevent the appearance of a dysmorphosis.
The interceptive treatment occurs while the anomaly already exists with a more or less important symptoms. Prevention intervenes before the onset of the complications.

Mr. DeCoster said: “the one who leaves a malformation aging, simply lets his chances of success flying away slowly”.

Functional therapeutics

Concerning therapeutic in ortho dental maxillo facial, there are two major approaches.

The mechanists: discrepancies are at the origin of the dysfunctions. The function follows the driven form, therefore we have to use mechanical forces to correct the discrepancies simultaneously. The correction of the function will be happen.

The functionalists: the function creates the form. We have to modify the functional environment that causes discrepancies by using the existing natural forces (facial musculature, eruptive force of the teeth, and the growth phenomena) to slowly reach harmony.

For Château: Functional orthopaedics modifies or activates a function to modify a form.
For Dangy: Functional orthopaedics represents a set of means which allow to modify the form of the dental arches, and the position of the teeth by using CNM during the functions.
For Mujz: orthopaedic functional therapeutics is the one that sets as a goal to modify the morphology of the dental and a maxillofacial system in order to obtain an architectonic complex more adapted to its intended function and the aesthetic of the face.
For Langlade: it’s “the practical exploitation of Lamark’s adaptation law”.
For Eschler: “ODFF (Ortho dento facial function) is a musculoskeletal reflex method”.
For Muller: “ODFF is the one that, in order to reach the best results, uses the natural forces to the maximum”.

Therefore, functional therapeutics aim to obtain a harmonious development of the dental maxillofacial system by the stimulation of all functions that could be involved without requiring mechanical means.

However, functional therapeutics shows certain limits related to:

• The concept itself
• The biological data
• The therapeutic methods