Soft Tissue Responses to Orthodontic Treatment: Impact of Premolar Extraction on Diverse Growth Patterns.

Abstract

Alteration in facial soft tissue plays an important role in the esthetics of an individual. The first thing a patient wants from orthodontic treatment is how well he/she looks. The degree of soft tissue changes brought about by the retraction of teeth can be influenced byfactors such as extraction pattern, muscle function, age, gender, weight, etc. Aim: The aim of the study was to compare post-orthodontic soft tissue changes among different facial growth patterns in orthodontic patients undergoing extraction of first premolar teeth. Pre-treatment and post-treatment lateral cephalograms of 45 orthodontic patients who underwent therapeutic extraction of the first premolars were included in the study. They were divided into three equal groups based on their facial growth pattern, that is, average, horizontal, and vertical. Eight soft tissue cephalometric measurements were done in all the lateral cephalograms. Paired Student t-tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to statistically analyze the results. The significance level was set as 0.05. The paired Student t-test showed a P-value > 0.05 for lower anterior facial height in all three groupsand for facial angle in vertical growers alone. ANOVA comparing the mean soft tissue changes among the three groups resulted in a P-value > 0.05 for all the measured parameters. Facial growth patterns donot influence the extent of soft tissue profile changes in orthodontic patients treated with extraction of first premolars.