Comparison of soft and hard tissue profiles of orthognathic surgery patients treated recently and 20 years earlier.

The aim of this study was to assess, by means of lateral cephalometric radiographs, any differences in the pretreatment soft and hard tissue facial profiles of patients who relatively recently underwent orthognathic surgery compared with those whose surgery occurred 20 years before. The pretreatment soft and hard tissue profiles of 91 orthognathic surgery patients were analyzed. These patients were divided into 2 groups. The first group consisted of 35 patients that were treated within the period from 1982 to 1986. The second group included 56 patients treated between 2000 and 2002. To assess patients' hard and soft tissue profiles, 4 cephalometric variables were evaluated on their pretreatment lateral cephalograms. For each of the 4 variables used, the patients were divided into one of 3 different profile subgroups: orthognathic, retrognathic, or prognathic profile. According to the distribution of profiles in each of the 2 groups, a qualitative comparison was made. Descriptive statistics and chi-squared tests were performed to access the possible differences at P < .05. By comparing pretreatment facial profiles between the 2 groups using the soft and hard tissue measurements, it was demonstrated that some changes actually occurred over the years. These differences in the profiles between the 2 groups indicated that orthodontic-surgical patients treated more recently exhibited smaller deviations from the norm than those treated in the earlier period. These findings may reflect possible changes in what is currently considered to be acceptable.