Treatment of clinically evident skeletal mandibular asymmetry

Abstract EN

Background : Orthodontists are frequently called upon to treat conditions in which there is asymmetry, either dentally, skeletally, or dent skeletally, between the patients' right and left sides.

Such asymmetries exist in all degrees of severity.

It is well known that correction of dental and functional asymmetries can be accomplished with orthodontic treatment only whereas skeletal asymmetries are considered to present difficult orthodontic treatment problems and require orthopedic treatment and / or surgical intervention.

The aim of this study was to assess the extent to which combined orthodontic and surgical treatment are applied to treat patients with mandible asymmetry.

Materials and methods : The sample of this study consisted of 33 patients with different skeletal clinically evident mandible asymmetry conditions.

Comprehensive examination protocol was established for each patient and the deformity of mandible asymmetry had been classified according to Henderson (1985) and James (1990) into 6 different conditions.

Then the treatment has been determined according to each individual case following the policy of each of the operators in the different hospitals from which the sample had been collected.

Results : The treatment of mandible asymmetry conditions was found to be mostly achieved by surgical intervention with or without orthodontic treatment.

Conclusion : The importance of the teamwork for the treatment of the candidates for orthognathic surgery was found to be realized by the operators in the different hospitals from which the sample had been collected but it needs to be emphasized and reinforced to be a well-established policy for the treatment of such cases.