Miniscrews versus surgical archwires for intermaxillary fixation in adults after orthognathic surgery

OBJECTIVE: We compared the skeletal and dental changes that resulted from the use of two methods of intermaxillary fixation (IMF)-miniscrews and surgical archwire-in 74 adult patients who had Class III malocclusion and were treated with the same orthognathic surgical procedure at a hospital in Korea. METHODS: All the patients underwent Le Fort I osteotomy and bilateral sagittal split ramus osteotomy with rigid fixation. They were divided into two groups according to the type of IMF used-group 1 underwent surgical archwire fixation and group 2 underwent orthodontic miniscrew fixation. In a series of cephalograms for each patient, we compared vertical and horizontal tooth-position measurements: (a) immediately after surgery (T(0)), (b) 3 months after surgery (T(1)), and (c) 6 months after surgery (T(2)). Cephalometric changes within each group were examined using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) while the independent samples t-test procedure was used to compare the two groups. RESULTS: After surgery, the maxillary incisors tended to be proclined in both groups although there were no significant differences. Incisor overbite increased significantly in both groups from T(0) to T(1), and the miniscrew group (group 2) showed slightly greater overbite than the archwire group (group 1). CONCLUSIONS: This study suggest that the use of orthodontic miniscrews and orthodontic surgical archwire for IMF in adult patients results in similar skeletal and dental changes.