Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 15, 2026
Quantitative Assessment Protocol for Facial Soft Tissue Volumetric Changes with Stereophotogrammetry
Published on: December 9, 2025
Long-term soft tissue changes after orthodontic and surgical corrections of skeletal class III malocclusions
L'Tanya J Bailey1, Amy Joslin Dover, William R Proffit
1Department of Orthodontics, School of Dentistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7450, USA.
Objective:
To evaluate long-term soft tissue changes after orthodontic and surgical corrections of skeletal Class III malocclusions.
Materials And Methods:
Postoperative cephalometric radiographs at 1 year and at 5 years or more after treatment were digitized for 92 patients who had surgical correction of their Class III problem by LeFort I maxillary advancement (n = 48), mandibular setback (n = 12), or a combination of the two procedures (n = 32) and for 25 patients who received orthodontic treatment only.
Results:
For all groups, the mean changes were quite small. For most measurements, fewer than 20% of patients experienced long-term changes from 2 mm to 4 mm, and fewer than 10% experienced long-term changes greater than 4 mm.
Conclusions:
A smaller percentage of surgically treated Class III patients showed long-term soft tissue changes than did surgically treated Class II patients, but compared with both Class II patients and untreated adults they experienced greater long-term forward projection of the soft tissue chin.
