Clinical response to allergies in patients.

Allergenic reactions are becoming a more prevalent concern of practitioners in health-related fields. As patient susceptibility increases, the need for understanding and successfully treating such heterogeneous responses becomes paramount. This article presents a theoretical bioengineering model that considers the influences of specific concentrations on their chemical effects. This model then is applied to contemporary orthodontics in which nickel and, to a lesser extent, chromium are antagonists in as many as 1 in 500 patients-which, for North America, amounts to about 4000 patients per year. For the occasional patient who responds positively to a questionnaire, a skin patch test would be administered to establish whether alternative alloys could be used, whether they be gold, platinum, nickel-free stainless steel, or titatnium-molybdenum alloys.