Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi. I had a malocclusion before I begun with braces, but not open bite at all. So, I had the bad luck of being in treatment with a ortho that attempted to improve my posterior cross bite with hyrax expander when I was 20 years old. The problem was that this did not work well (due the poor skills of my ex-ortho and because of my adult age, so It would be very difficult to open the upper jaw without SARPE) and the upper molars roots and dentoalveolar complex inclinated both to the cheek side, increasing the vertical dimension and, not only without improving my cross bite, but generating an important anterior open bite.

Now, with another ortho, I had last september SARPE to achieve the cross bite. That was OK.

So, at this moment, she and my surgeon told me that I will need bimaxilar surgery with upper jaw impactation to close the bite and a osteotomy in the lower jaw because of molar III class pattern.

The stuff is that I'm not very happy with the idea of surgery, becaue before my first treatment I didn'd have open bite at all, so I thought that maybe If it was generated by bad-treatment, It could improve and return to the original state with a good one.

So, my question is if does exist any method with proved good outcomes to fix cases of skeletal open bite in young adults, avoinding surgery way. My open bite is about 3 mm.

Thanks in advance.

surusuru
To me, 3mm does not sound huge at all. I would imagine, removal of 2 lower (or 4 upper and lower) premolars will generate enough space to close it, if even needed as 3mm is not much (maybe even interprox reduction can do that). They usually create space and then tilt the top front teeth inwards, erupting them if necessary to close the bite.

If I were you, I would have gotten the 2nd and even 3rd opinions. I am not a big fan of surgeries myself and breaking all the facial bones to close a small open bite just does not seem right to me. Good luck to you!