Changes in the facial soft tissue profile after maxillary orthognathic surgery

OBJECTIVES: To compare the changes of the soft tissue profile in relation to the displacement of the underlying hard structures in maxillary orthognathic surgery and to contribute to the esthetic prediction of the facial profile after surgical procedures. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed the sagittal changes in the facial soft tissue profile related to surgical changes in skeletal structures after maxillary osteotomy in a retrospective study. The study sample comprised 115 adult patients between the ages of 18–50 years who had undergone maxillary orthognathic surgery and interdisciplinary orthodontic treatment at the Department of Orthodontics, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany. LeFort I osteotomy cases in both maxillary monognathic and bignathic osteotomy procedures were included. All subjects had received rigid fixation. A cephalometric analysis of presurgical and postsurgical cephalograms was performed and the correlations between hard tissue and soft tissue change ratios were evaluated using a bivariate linear regression analysis. A vertical line through the landmark sella (S) perpendicular to the nasion-sella line (NSL) served as the reference plane. RESULTS: The subnasale (Sn) followed the A point (A) by 57%, the soft tissue A point (A′) followed the A point (A) by 73% and the upper lip, represented by the landmark labrale superius (Ls) followed the upper incisor (Is) by 73%; all three in a linear correlation with a mean prediction error of nearly 2 mm. CONCLUSION: The scatterplots show a linear correlation with a wide spread for all three pairs of reference points. The wide spread and the high prediction error of almost 2 mm indicate low predictability of the expected lip position and Sn.