Do laypersons perceive aesthetic differences between coated and uncoated orthodontic archwires?

INTRODUCTION: Aesthetic brackets are routinely combined with metallic wires in fixed orthodontic therapy, mainly due to the disadvantages of the clinical use of aesthetic archwires. The current situation needs to be explored in the literature by considering laypersons’ perceptions. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this cross-sectional study was to evaluate laypersons’ aesthetic perceptions of metal archwires with and without aesthetic coating. Three age ranges and both sexes were evaluated. METHODS: A volunteer using fixed aesthetic orthodontic appliance was photographed wearing the following archwires: stainless steel, nickel-titanium (NiTi), NiTi coated with epoxy resin and NiTi coated with rhodium. Using a 100-mm visual analog scale, 90 laypersons evaluated the photographs. Sex and age ranges (18-30, 31-45, over 46 years of age) were evaluated. The comparisons between the archwires and between age ranges were made using ANOVA and Tukey’s test. Genders were compared using Mann-Whitney test. RESULTS: The results showed that the evaluators considered the archwire coated with epoxy resin to be the most aesthetic (60.64 ± 13.04) and the NiTi wire to be the least aesthetic (30.82 ± 7.79) (p< 0.05). Only the range of 31-45 years of age considered the NiTi archwires less aesthetic, when compared with the other age groups. For the other archwires, no statistically significant difference were found between the age groups. No differences between the sexes were detected. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that the aesthetic coated archwires represent an improvement in the visual aspect of ceramic brackets. The epoxy-coated metal wire was considered the most aesthetic option.