The past thirty years orthodontics developed very rapidly. However, developments in clinical orthodontics have been focused for a great deal on technical improvements, the recent self ligating bracket hype being a good example of that. It is disappointing, however, that this remarkable progress in the technique is not reflected in a remarkable increase of good treatment results. It appears to be that the basic problems in orthodontics are still the same as 100 years ago.

Having said that, let’s try to make things better! In medicine evidence based treatment is more and more common practice, in orthodontics this is much less a basic principle of treatment. However, the last couple of years several randomized controlled clinical trials have been performed into timing and the effect of different types of appliances in Class II treatment. From the view point of evidence based treatment I will address the question: where are we now in Class II treatment?

CURRICULUM VITAE: Anne Marie Kuijpers-Jagtman

Anne Marie Kuijpers-Jagtman has been Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Orthodontics and Oral Biology at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands, since 1995. The Nijmegen department is one of the biggest orthodontic departments in Europe and consists of the Orthodontic Department proper, the Laboratory for Oral Biology, and the Cleft Palate Craniofacial Unit. Professor Kuijpers-Jagtman is a Past-President of the European Orthodontic Society, a former President of Dutch Cleft Palate Association and also of the Dutch Society for the Study of Orthodontics. In 2002 she was honoured with the Fellowship in Dental Surgery by Election of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and in 2004 she received the Cesare Luzi Memorial Award of SIDO.
Professor Kuijpers-Jagtman is editor-in-chief of Orthodontics and Craniofacial Research and she is serving at the editorial board of several other international orthodontic journals. She has (co)authored more than 225 publications on her main topics of interest, which are cleft lip and palate, the biological background of orthodontics, 3D-imaging in orthodontics, and evidence based orthodontic therapy. She has lectured extensively on these topics in 31 countries all over the world.

Class II Treatment, Where Are We?

In Pub med almost 3000 articles on Class II treatment are listed. This large amount of papers suggests a profound knowledge on the topic. If we look at the publications from a hierarchy of evidence point of view, however, the knowledge seems to be poor. So the question arises, what do we really know about Class II treatment – where are we?
The decision for a certain treatment approach should be based on the evidence available in literature and ideally a Class II treatment should be cause oriented, efficacious, efficient and stable. However, are our treatment decisions always evidence based and our treatments cause oriented? Is it really possible to plan a cause oriented treatment or in other words, are we able to predict treatment results.
Are there differences in terms of the predictability of treatment results among different treatment approaches for Class II treatment? Which factors influence treatment success?

CURRICULUM VITAE: Sabine Ruf

Sabine Ruf received her DDS from the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany in 1991. She obtained her Dr. med. dent in 1994 and her Dr. med. dent. habil in 2001 from the same University. In 2002 she was appointed as Professor and Chair of the Clinic for Orthodontics of the University of Berne, Switzerland. In 2005 she returned to Germany and is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthodontics of the University of Giessen, Germany. She received the W.J.B. Houston Research Award of the EOS in 1997, the 6th S.I.D.O. World Award in 1997 as well as two EOS Best Poster Award in 2001 and 2006 (Co-author).