[Effect of surgically assisted rapid maxillary expansion on maxillary skeletal movement: a comparative study between tooth-borne and bone-borne palatal distracters]

ABSTRACT

The transverse deficiency of the maxilla is considered as one of the common clinical orthodontic problem, whereas the Surgically Assisted Rapid Maxillary Expansion is one of the essential treatments for the correction of that skeletal deficiency in the adult patients. The aim of this study was to assess the ratio of horizontal skeletal movement and tipping movement of the two parts of the maxilla after Surgically Assisted Rapid Maxillary Expansion with Lefort-I cortical osteotomy, midpalatal suture and pterygoid-maxillary suture osteotomies by using tooth-borne palatal expanders and bone-borne transpalatal distracters. Twenty adult patients [with ages between 18-30 years without inborn deformities or congenital syndromes] with skeletal maxillary narrowness being clinically and radiologically assessed. The studied sample is separated randomly into two groups Group I, the expansion performed by tooth-borne palatal expanders. Group II, the expansion performed by bone-borne transpalatal distracters. A 7 day latency period passed before the activation of the expansion device [1 mm/day]. The ratio of horizontal skeletal movement in the tooth-borne palatal expanders group after 4 months of expansion was 46.98% of the entire expansion, whereas that was a little higher 48.83% in the bone-borne transpalatal distracters group but this difference was not statistically significant. We conclude that the efficiency of the tooth-borne palatal expanders is nearly similar to that of the bone-borne transpalatal distracters after Surgically Assisted Rapid Maxillary Expansion with Lefort-I cortical osteotomy, midpalatal suture and pterygoid-maxillary suture osteotomies