Achieving excellence with interdisciplinary approaches in complex orthodontic adult patients.

Over the last decades the percentage of adult orthodontic patients has substantially increased. Undeniably, an important motif for seeking orthodontic care at an older age is smile improvement, but this is not all. Frequently, impaired dentofacial aesthetics are combined with several other issues: severe dentoskeletal malocclusions; multiple tooth loss due to caries or endodontic failure; dental agenesis or trauma; periodontal breakdown; or functional problems, such as temporomandibular disorders or obstructive sleep apnoea.

Orthodontic space closure in a young female patient with solitary median maxillary central incisor syndrome.

A solitary median maxillary incisor can occur as a rare single dental anomaly or a symptom of the early-intrauterine developmental brain disorder of holoprosencephaly. The few published case reports about orthodontic treatment for this disorder have only described space opening for prosthodontic replacement of a central incisor. In contrast, the present patient was treated with extraction of the solitary median maxillary central incisor and orthodontic space closure with subsequent minimally invasive restorations in order to avoid looming esthetic or periodontal sequelae associated with any type of fixed bridgework or implant-borne crowns in the sensitive maxillary anterior area-which is especially indicated in young girls with a hyperdivergent growth pattern.