Poster 049: Maxillary Vestibular Incision for Surgically Assisted Rapid Palatal Expansion: Evidence for a Conservative Approach

Abstract

Introduction: Surgically assisted rapid palatal expansion (SARPE) is a widely used, simple, effective, and stable procedure in the correction of severe maxillary transverse deficiencies. Esthetic changes after SARPE depend not only on the bony architecture, but also alteration in the superjacent soft tissue. It has been suggested that soft tissue changes may be more affected by the type and position of the soft tissue incision and methods of closure than by the surgically induced hard tissue change. The traditional bilateral mucoperiosteal incision made from the piriform rims to zygomatic buttress can cause muscle detachment during stripping of the periosteum which shortens and retracts laterally causing thinning of the upper lip, decrease of visible vermillion and flaring of the alar base. Our aim was to present a conservative alternative approach to the traditional maxillary vestibular incision and to evaluate soft tissue changes in upper lip length, vermillion width, and alar base width between patients who received a traditional incision and those of a conservative incision.