Published Online: Feb 12, 2024
Page range: 185 - 193
Received: Jul 01, 2023
Accepted: Oct 01, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/aoj-2023-0035
© 2023 Carmen Au et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Aims
To investigate the non-attendance of patients at orthodontic appointments and to determine related reasons.
Methods
Appointment data were collected from the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Otago between August and October in 2013 (paper-appointment system using post letters) and 2019 (digital-appointment system using automatically generated short message service (SMS) texts before the Covid-19 pandemic). The demographic and time characteristics of patients who attended and failed their appointments were collected for statistical analysis.
Results
The total number of appointments was 5810, including 2761 by 1901 patients in 2013 and 3049 by 2009 patients in 2019. The overall fail to attend (FTA) rates were 16.1% in 2013 and 12.9% in 2019. Morning appointments showed a higher failure rate (16.0% in 2013 and 14.2% in 2019) than the afternoon appointments (12.1% in 2013 and 11.1% in 2019) (
Conclusion
The fail to attend (FTA) of orthodontic appointments was approximately 15% in the Otago University Orthodontic Clinic, New Zealand. Patients from lower SES, Māori and Pasifika peoples, and morning appointments had higher FTA rates. Bonding appointments had the lowest FTA rate. FTA significantly decreased after the introduction of a SMS text reminder system. An effort is still required to improve the orthodontic attendance rate, and future studies could consider investigating the digital reminder systems, such as smart phone apps, to enhance clinical attendance in the electronic age.