Long-term effects of mini-screw–assisted rapid palatal expansion on airway:

Abstract

Objectives To evaluate the long-term effects on airway in patients with mini-screw–assisted rapid palatal expansion (MARPE), rapid palatal expansion (RPE), and controls with three-dimensional cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) analysis. Materials and Methods A total of 180 CBCTs of 60 patients were analyzed at different time points, such as pretreatment, postexpansion, and posttreatment. Patients were divided into three groups: mini-screw assisted rapid palatal expansion (MARPE), rapid palatal expansion (RPE), and controls. The nasal cavity, nasopharyngeal, oropharyngeal, and laryngopharyngeal airway volume and area were measured. Changes in total airway volume, total airway area, minimal cross-sectional area, maxillary intermolar width, external maxillary width, and palatal width were also evaluated. Results Both MARPE and RPE caused a statistically significant increase in the airway after expansion as compared with the control group, but there was no statistically significant difference in the change in airway between MARPE, RPE, and the control group at posttreatment, except for nasopharyngeal volume, which was significantly increased in the MARPE group. There was no correlation between the amount of expansion and increase in total airway volume. Conclusions There was a significant increase in total airway volume, total airway area, and minimal cross-sectional area with MARPE and RPE immediately after expansion, but at posttreatment, the changes in the MARPE and RPE groups were similar to the change in the control group. However, MARPE led to a significant long-term increase in nasopharyngeal volume. The amount of expansion did not correlate with the increase in pharyngeal airway volume.

Surgically Assisted Rapid Palatal Expansion and Mini-screw Assisted Rapid Palatal Expansion - A review

“…13,14 In some studies, the distance between the central fossa of maxillary first molars has been used to define the maxillary intermolar width. 8 Regardless of the method used for measurement, the difference between the pre-treatment and post-expansion are used to calculate the amount of the expansion. Nada et al performed a study in 2012 on patients who underwent surgical procedure for expansion of maxilla and observed that there was an increase of 5.64 mm +/-2.9 mm in the intermolar width after expansion.…”

“…MARPE appliances are a relatively newer option for the correction of posterior crossbite and can be used to achieve higher amount of skeletal expansion of maxilla than conventional RPE. 8,9,10 Different devices using mini-implants and maxillary expansion have been reported in the literature. 11 This review will describe the changes achieved with conventional RPE, SARPE, and MARPE.…”

Applications of mini-implants in orthodontics

“…The changes achieved with MARPE are found to be stable over time. In a recent study, Mehta et al showed that MARPE appliances led to an increased nasopharyngeal volume after 2.5 years following expansion [3] . However, there were no differences in the total airway volume between MARPE and controls.…”

“…Thus, the use of palatal mini-implants have increased in past few years [3] . The failure rates of mini-implants are in the low range of 10 to 30 percentage [1,7,8] .…”

“…The applications of mini-implants are not only limited to retraction of anterior teeth in cases requiring maximum anchorage. Mini-implants are also useful for protraction of molars, expansion of maxillary arch, management of impacted canines, intrusion of posterior maxillary and mandibular dentition, and correction of inclined occlusal planes [1][2][3][4][5] .…”