RESUMO
Treatment timing is a very important factor to consider in treating skeletal Class III patients by means of maxillary protraction. According to the literature maxillary protraction should be carried out at an early age before puberty. However, no scientific data were presented to support this statement and recent studies supported by statistical data showed disagreement concerning the optimum treatment time of maxillary protraction. Therefore, there is no agreement about the optimum treatment time of maxillary protraction. In this study hand-wrist X-rays were taken from 119 patients and subjects were grouped into prepubertal and pubertal group according to their skeletal maturity. Pretreatment and posttreatment lateral cephalometric X-rays were taken and treatment effects were compared. The average treatment time was 6.5 months for the prepubertal group and 6.1 months for the pubertal group. The obtained results were as follows; 1. The amount of maxillary forward movement was the same for prepubertal and pubertal group. 2. The amount of maxillary downward movement was the same for prepubertal and pubertal group. 3. The amount of mandibular downward and backward rotational movement was the same for prepubertal and pubertal group. 4. Dental effects were the same for prepubertal and pubertal group.