Dentoskeletal effects of clear aligner vs twin block-ashort-term study of functional appliances.

Abstract

The twin block (TB) is one of the most widely used functional appliances for the correction of classII malocclusions. Align Technology (San Jose, CA, USA) developed the Invisalign® mandibular advancement (MA) that replicates the mechanism of action of afunctional appliance. The aim of this study was to compare the changes produced by the TB versus those by MA. The records of 56classII patients treated with the TB (TB group: n = 35) or the MA (MA group: n = 21) were compared to acontrol sample of 15 untreated classII subjects (UC2). The TB and MA groups showed asignificant reduction of the ANB angle, compared to the controls (TB group: -1.5°; MA group: -1.5°; UC2 group: +0.2°). For the Co-Gn values, the TB and MA groups showed significant differences when compared with the UC2 group with an increase of 8.4 mm in TB patients and of 8.3 mm in MA patients. The increase of the distance of Pg to the true vertical line (TVL) was the only measurement where significant differences between the three groups were found with agreater advancement of the soft tissue pogonion in the TB group compared with the MA group and the UC2 group (TB group: +3 mm; MA group: +0.9 mm; UC2 group: -1.6 mm). The angle between the palatal plane and mandibular plane revealed amore relevant reduction in the TB and MA groups. Both appliances were able to reduce overjet and vertical overbite values. Treatment with the MA and TB appliances produced asignificant elongation of the mandible with an improvement in sagittal relationship, overjet, and vertical overbite and with good control of the vertical relationship. TB subjects showed agreater advancement of the soft tissue chin.