Clinicians’ Choices in Selecting Orthodontic Archwires

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the choices made by clinicians in selecting archwires during the initial, intermediate and final stages of orthodontic treatment with fixed appliances.
Methods: We carried out a questionnaire-based study at the Orthodontics and Pedodontics Clinic Târgu Mureş, between March 2012 and September 2012. The questionnaires consisted of two parts: the first included questions related to the dimension, alloy used in fabrication, section (round or rectangular) and manufacturer of the archwires used by the orthodontists in their orthodontic practice, the second part was concerned with their personal opinion about the physical properties and disadvantages of the archwires.
Results: From a total number of 90 distributed questionnaires, 62 were returned. The majority of clinicians are using stainless steel (SS) and nickel-titanium alloy (NiTi) wires in their fixed orthodontic treatments, very few are using beta-titanium (Beta Ti), copper nickel-titanium (Co- NiTi) and esthetic archwires. The preferred dimension seem to be 0.022 inches in the appliance system. Regarding the wire dimensions, 0.014, 0.016 inch wires are mostly used from the round section group and 0.016 × 0.022 inch, 0.017 × 0.025 inch from the rectangular ones.
Conclusions: There is a general lack of agreement between the clinicians surveyed regarding the properties of an ideal archwire and the disadvantages of the used wires. The most frequently used alloys seemed to be the SS and NiTi.