Maloclusión y necesidad de tratamiento ortodóntico en adolescentes de Pasto, Colombia

introduction: the objective was to assess the severity of malocclusion and orthodontic treatment needs in adolescents from pasto, colombia adolescents by using the dental aesthetic index (dai). methods: a total of 387 adolescents were randomly selected from a population of 20175 students between 13 and 16 years of age. this cross-sectional study was carried out at champagnat, san francisco de asís and san juan bosco high schools. students wearing orthodontic appliances or reporting a history of orthodontic treatment were excluded from the study. clinical examination was conducted with the dai. mann-whitney and kruskall-wallis analyses were used to compare the dai scores according to gender and socioeconomic status (ses), respectively. results: the dai mean was 34.37 ± 14.71. the 52.7% had between a severe and very severe malocclusion which implies an orthodontic treatment need. statistically significant differences were found between the dai scores according to ses (p < 0.001). conclusion: half of the evaluated adolescents would need orthodontic treatment. in this study, ses was an important variable that is related to the dental aesthetic index scores.