Present orthodontic thought in Germany

A REVIEW of the opinions expressed during the last fifty to eighty years concerning the nature and treatment of distoclusion will lead one to the conclusion that these opinions have been subject to constant change and that purely mechanical considerations regarding the form and manufacture of appliances have carried more weight than differential diagnosis or pathogenic knowledge. I will not go into the details of this repeated change in suggestions for treatment, but I would like to point out that from an exchange of correspondence between Angle and Oppenheim2 in 1929, which was published in American and German professional journals, it becomes evident that during the later years of his life Angle, too, was convinced of the need to classify distoclusion cases according to their various characteristics in order to obtain a, clearer idea of the type of treatment that should be employed. In other words, Angle also required a differential diagnostic examination. The method of treatment must be correlated to the result of this examination, which can be carried out by studying the relationship between the face and the jaws by means of photographs or teleradiographs. If we consider the various methods of t,reatment, it can be said that, on the whole, with the methods which have been in use up to now, alveolar movement of the teeth to correct occlusal anomalies was generally considered a more reliable way to obtain a durable result than movement of the entire mandible. Kingsley ‘sz8 method of “jumping the bite” proved to be reliable only in distoclusion cases which were not too pronounced and which did not exceed onehalf of one premolar in breadth. All other methods relying on the aid of an extraoral anchorage (headgear) or inter-maxillary elastics compensated for the occlusal anomaly chiefly through alveolar movements of the teeth. With these methods the movements are usually distributed between both dental arches, with a distal movement of the upper teeth and a corresponding alveolar mesial movement of the lower teeth. Functional orthopedics (1989) brought into the treatment of distoclusion a new development which must be considered extremely valuable. In this