Perception of frontal facial aesthetics before and after orthognathic mandibular advancement

Abstract

AIM: To establish whether mandibular surgical advancement effected discernible changes in the frontal facial aesthetics of patients, as assessed on photographs by lay persons and dental professionals, and if so, whether the pre- or post operative appearance was preferred. METHODS: Observations were made on ten patients who had undergone orthognathic surgery with pre- and post- operative orthodontics in the endeavour to correct mandibular deficiency. The responses of the assessors were recorded on a Microsoft Excel© spread sheet and imported into SAS (SAS Institute, Carrey, NC) for analysis. The data were assessed by way of the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) and Fisher’s exact tests. RESULTS: The postoperative faces were perceived as more favourable in the majority of observations but more regularly by the specialists (p-value = 0.0091). Stratification by gender concluded that the male specialists predominantly chose the after treatment photograph.