Victor Ravelo; Sergio Olate; Claudio Huentequeo-Molina; Ziyad S. Haidar; Felipe Martínez; Ivonne Garay & Marcelo Parra

SUMMARY: Orthognathic surgery is performed in subjects with some type of skeletal alteration. Maxillomandibular movements have an impact on the airway (AW) and this aspect must be included into surgical planning. The aim of this research is to determine the changes in the AW after orthognathic surgery. A pilot study was conducted including 51 subjects with class II and class III facial deformity; they were included using the ANB angle and the type of dental occlusion. Cone beam computed tomography were performed showing the maximum volume in the airway and the minimum and maximum areas; in addition, the position of the hyoid bone and the angle of the mandibular plane were included to relate it to the morphology of the AW; to define statistical significance, a value of p<0.05 was established, including the student's t-test and the t-test. The results showed that class II subjects significantly increased the volume and maximum and minimum areas of the AW; skeletal class III subjects did not presented significant differences between the pre- and post-surgical stage; the hyoid bone was in an anterior position in both class II and class III cases. It is possible to conclude that AW improves substantially in subjects with facial class II and remains unchanged in subjects with facial class III.

KEY WORDS: Airway; Orthognathic surgery; Sleep apnea.

RAVELO, V.; OLATE, S. HUENTEQUEO-MOLINA, C.; HAIDAR, Z.; MARTÍNEZ, F.; GARAY, I. & PARRA, M. Airway changes after bimaxillary orthognathic surgery. Int. J. Morphol., 40(5):1361-1367, 2022.