one jaw or two jaws? what is current trend among surgeons and orthodontists

introduction : the aim of this study is to define the trend of the orthodontists and the surgeons in the borderline class iii patients and assess their satisfaction after the surgery. materials and methods : the study population consisted of 31 patients (16 female and 15 male) with the average age of 21 years, whose final occlusion 2 months after the surgery was perfect. the amount of reverse overjet was less than 5 mm in all patients. surgeons and orthodontists made their treatment plan separately and if there were any differences, the surgeon and orthodontist would discuss it and the patient would be treated by the best treatment plan. the patients’ satisfaction at least 5 months after orthognathic surgery was assessed quantitatively by means of a visual analogue scale (vas) of 10 cm. result : among 31 patients entered in this study, orthodontists suggested two-jaw surgery for 61% of patients while surgeons suggested two-jaw surgery for 45% of patients. in 35% of patients, the orthodontist’s treatment plans was different from the surgeon’s, but these differences were not significant (p = 0.23). this shows that the orthodontists’ and surgeons’ current trend in borderline class iii patients (reverse overjet less than 5 mm) is two-jaw surgery. at least 5 months after the surgery, the total satisfaction score for appearance was 5 (maximum 7 and minimum 2) and this can indicates that most of the patients see no changes in their appearance or their changes were not significant. conclusion : data analysis of this study indicated that there are no differences between orthodontists and surgeons trend in the treatment plan of the borderline patients, but both of them prefer two- jaw surgery (for 55% of patients) for borderline patients (discrepancy less than 5 mm). keywords : orthognathic surgery, one jaw surgery, two jaws surgery, borderline patient