Skeletal and Soft-Tissue Stability Following Advancement Genioplasty: A Comparative Analysis between Wire and Miniplate Osteosynthesis

BACKGROUND: Genioplasty has nowadays become a routine procedure in the correction of dentofacial deformities. The present study aimed to evaluate and compare the osseous and soft-tissue stability after advancement genioplasties, stabilized using wire and plate osteosynthesis. METHODOLOGY: The study was conducted on ten patients who underwent advanced genioplasty. The patients were divided equally into two groups. In the Group I patients, plates and in Group II, wires were used for stabilization. Lateral cephalograms preoperative and 6 months postoperative were analyzed using Park et al. method of cephalometric analysis. RESULTS: All the ten patients experienced a reliable improvement in esthetics. Although statistically not significant, Group II wire patients have slightly more relapse in the horizontal direction than Group I. The mean ratio of sagittal changes of osseous soft tissue for Group I was 1:0.88 and for Group II wires was 1:0.80. CONCLUSION: The choice of method of fixation following genioplasty would entirely be based on the merits of the individual cases. The marginal edge of advantage seen in miniplate osteosynthesis when compared to wire osteosynthesis is seen in cases that require larger chin advancements.