ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the psychological status of female patients with mandibular angle hypertrophy before and after receiving mandibular angle osteotomy (MAO) using psychological measurement methods.Methods:The study included 36 female patients (age ranged 18-35 years, with mean age of 23 years) who underwent bilateral mandibular angle osteotomy at the Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery, Naval Medical University. Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90), Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) were used to assess the patients′ psychological status before and after surgery. SPSS 18.0 was used to compare the preoperative and postoperative data with the national norms.Results:According to the SCL-90 questionnaire, the scores of the six factors, including obsessive-compulsive symptoms (2.24±0.43 vs. 1.62±0.58, P<0.01), interpersonal sensitivity (1.85±0.46 vs. 1.65±0.61, P=0.02), depression (1.91±0.43 vs. 1.50±0.59, P<0.01), anxiety (1.75±0.42 vs. 1.39±0.43, P<0.01), hostility (1.86±0.45 vs. 1.46±0.55, P<0.01), and paranoia (2.18±0.46 vs. 1.43±0.57, P<0.01) of patients before surgery were significantly higher than the national norms. One month after surgery, there was a significant improvement in SAS and SDS scores compared to preoperative scores ( t=8.0, 10.4, P<0.01). The SAS score decreased from 43.0±9.8 to 37.5±6.8, and the SDS score decreased from 47.1±10.6 to 39.4±7.5. There was no statistically significant difference in the depression and anxiety indices of SCL-90 compared to the national norms ( P>0.05). Conclusions:Mandibular angle osteotomy significantly improves the psychological health of female patients with mandibular angle hypertrophy and can alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and depression.