Patient satisfaction after orthodontic treatment combined with orthognathic surgery: A systematic review

To synthesize available evidence about factors associated with patients' satisfaction after orthodontic treatment combined with orthognathic surgery.

Studies that evaluated any factor associated with patients' satisfaction after the conclusion of an orthodontic treatment combined with an orthognathic surgery were identified. Orthognathic surgical procedures should have been undertaken after completion of craniofacial growth. Any satisfaction psychometric tool was considered. No language limitation was set. A detailed individual search strategy for each of the following bibliographic databases was crafted: MEDLINE, PubMed, EBM Reviews, Web of Science, EMBASE, LILACS, and Scopus. The references cited in the identified articles were also cross-checked, and a partial gray-literature search was undertaken using Google Scholar.

Eight articles satisfied the inclusion criteria of this systematic review and accounted for 998 patients. The included studies showed large variation in sample size (range  =  44 to 505 patients), age (range  =  15 to 72 years old), distinct psychological evaluation tools, and time elapsed between the assessment and the completion of surgery and postorthodontic treatment. Most of the studies (five of eight) were classified as having high risk of bias.

Factors associated with satisfaction were final esthetic outcome, perceived social benefits from the outcome, type of orthognathic surgery, sex, and changes in patient self-concept during treatment. Factors associated with dissatisfaction were treatment length; sensation of functional impairment and/or dysfunction after surgery, and perceived omitted information about surgical risks.