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During orthodontic therapy, patients frequently complain about pain and discomfort, especially during insertion of fixed appliances. Skeletal anchorage using an interdental microimplant is a new concept in orthodontic treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences and changes in the level of pain among patients in relation to orthodontic microimplant treatments. Forty microimplants were applied to the maxilla as skeletal anchors in the orthodontic treatment. The visual analog scale (VAS) was used to evaluate the patients’ perception of pain during this new modality treatment. The premolar extraction VAS core was used as a baseline for the complete orthodontic procedure. The mean VAS score was 35.8 mm at 24 h after premolar extraction. The mean VAS score for insertion and removal of the microimplant 24 h after the operation was 12.3 and 7.8 mm, respectively. Three months after removal of the skeletal anchors, the VAS score had decreased to 3.2 mm and was the same as with the traditional orthodontic treatment. By using the repeated-measure general linear model (GLM), we found that the score 1 day after microimplant placement was significantly less than that 1 day after first premolar extraction or that 1 day after fixed appliance insertion. This result indicates that interdental microimplant did not generate any greater pain than other orthodontic procedures. Therefore, patients were willing to adopt the new orthodontic treatment.

Purpose Various types of temporary implants have been introduced to serve as orthodontic anchorage. The hypothesis of this study is that microimplants of 1.2 mm diameter can be used as orthodontic anchors, and that their success is related to their length. The aim of this study is to determine the incidence of anchor retention after orthodontic force application for moving teeth, and to determine the relationship of microimplant length to retention rate. Methods Fifty-nine microimplants (diameter: 1.2 mm) were placed in 29 patients as orthodontic anchorages. After 2 weeks of microimplant placement, a force of 100 to 200 g was loaded with an elastometric chain or NiTi coil spring. Risk factors were characterized as to why a microimplant may fail, and Fisher’s exact test was used for statistical analysis. Results Nine microimplants were removed and the overall success rate was 84.7%. Exploring the causes for failure, we found significant differences between the length of microimplants and success rate; 6 mm was 72.2% and 8 mm was 90.2%. Conclusions The results suggest that microimplants are suited as an alternative orthodontic anchorage. We recommend that 8-mm microimplants are preferable to 6-mm.