Professor Chun-Ming CHEN 1,2
1 Professor, School of Dentistry, College of Dental Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2 Head, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Bimaxillary protrusion is one of the common facial deformities in Asian populations. Patients with anterior maxillary protrusion are characterized by protruding anterior maxillary teeth with everted lips, which usually cause a gummy smile.
Anterior maxillary subapical osteotomy (AMSO) is a common technique. The surgical approach influences blood flow to the anterior maxillary segment. In the literature review, two major surgical approaches were found to be used for AMSO: (1) bilateral vertical vestibular incisions of the premolars (Wassmund technique: a small vertical palatal incision; Wunderer technique: a horizontal transpalatal incision) and (2) a horizontal vestibular incision extending from the right premolar to the left premolar across the midline (Cupar technique: no palatal incision).
We developed an integrated AMSO (Wassmund and Wunderer technique) to preserve more blood supply to the anterior maxillary segment and provide sufficient vision to perform a palatal osteotomy.
