Abstract
The purposes of this study were to investigate the relationship between occlusion and lingual articulation of skeletal Class III asymmetry cases and to evaluate the effect of orthognathic surgery on lingual articulation.
The subjects used in this study were three adult patients, two males and one female, who required orthognathic surgery. These patients did not have any complaints about speech and tongue position both preoperatively and postoperatively. Lingual articulation was observed by static palatography. In addition, occlusion, shape of the palate and maxillo-facial morphology were analyzed by using occlusograms, Moire topographies and cephalometric radiographs, respectively. Materials were obtained at preoperative and postoperative intervals of 3, 6, 18, and 30 to 42 months.
The results of this study revealed that the patterns of postoperative palatograms had a tendency similar to those of normal occlusion in spite of differences in patients and/or in consonants.
In conclusion, the patients had a natural tendency to adapt postoperative lingual articulation to the reestablished craniofacial morphology corrected by orthognathic surgery.
