Alveolar bone response to light-force tipping and bodily movement in maxillary incisor advancement: A prospective randomized clinical trial.

OBJECTIVE: To compare alveolar bone thickness and height changes between untreated incisors (control), incisors advanced with light-force tipping, and incisors advanced with bodily movement mechanics. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-three subjects (aged 9.49 +/- 1.56 years) with anterior crossbite were allocated into an untreated group (control), tipping group, or bodily movement group. Lateral cephalograms were taken before advancement (T(0)) and after obtaining normal overjet (T(1)). Changes in labial and palatal alveolar bone thickness and height surrounding maxillary incisors were evaluated with limited field-of-view cone-beam computed tomography before advancement (CT(0)) and 4 months after normal overjet was obtained (CT(1)). Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank and Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA tests were used to compare changes within and between groups, as appropriate. The significance level was set at .05. RESULTS: Labial alveolar bone thickness at the midroot and apical levels were significantly decreased in the bodily movement group ( P < .05). However, between groups, there was no statistically significant difference in labial bone thickness changes at any level. Palatal and total alveolar bone thickness at the midroot and apical levels were significantly decreased in the tipping group compared with the control and bodily movement groups ( P < .05). Neither labial nor palatal bone height changes were significantly different among groups. CONCLUSIONS: Maxillary incisor advancement with light-force tipping and bodily movement in growing patients resulted in labial alveolar bone thickness and labial and palatal alveolar bone height changes that were similar to the untreated group.