Reliable surgically assisted rapid palatal expansion by maxillary widening device

For surgically assisted rapid palatal expansion, bone-borne as well as tooth-borne devices to widen the maxilla are commonly used, both revealing advantages and disadvantages. In the area of bone-borne devices, several new designs have been introduced during the last years as an alternative to the tooth-borne Biederman-Hyrax screw. However, with these new distractors, new problems occurred. Therefore, we designed the Maxillary Widening Device (MWD; Normed, Tuttlingen, Germany), a new bone-borne distractor, being not only user-friendly but also universally applicable. We have used this device since 2005 in patients with upper jaw compression, and the MWD turned out to be easy and quick to insert. Using a minimal surgical approach such as the modified Le Fort I osteotomy, operation time was low. Fixating as well as activating the distraction cylinder turned out to be very user-friendly. The removal of the device after the retaining period was also unproblematic, and the later forming of the dental arch was good to satisfying in all patients.