Surgical Methods for the Acceleration of the Orthodontic Tooth Movement.

Surgical techniques for the acceleration of the orthodontic tooth movement have been tested for more than 100 years in clinical practice. Since original methods have been extremely invasive and have been associated with increased tooth morbidity and various other gaps, the research in this field has always followed an episodic trend. Modern approaches represent a well-refined strategy where the concept of the bony block has been abandoned and only a cortical plate around the orthodontic tooth movement has been desired. Selective alveolar decortication has been a reproducible gold standard to this end. Its proposed mechanism has been the induction of rapid orthodontic tooth movement through the involvement of the periodontal ligament. More recent techniques included further refinement of this procedure through less invasive techniques such as the use of piezoelectricity and corticision. This chapter focuses on the evolution of the surgical approaches and the mechanistic concepts underlying the biological process during the surgically accelerated orthodontic tooth movement.