Bone grafting in orthognathic surgery: a systematic review

Bone grafting has been used in orthognathic surgery to fill the gaps created by jaw repositioning, with the intention of improving healing and stability. Since the majority of orthognathic cases have a satisfactory result, the decision to graft or not is a clinical dilemma. A systematic review of the literature was performed on the use of bone grafts in orthognathic surgery. A search of PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials yielded 1927 articles published up until 2018. An additional 10 articles were retrieved through manual searching of the reference lists and citations. After title and abstract screening, 58 articles were potentially eligible; full-text screening excluded 10 of these. Thus 48 articles were included in this review. The present literature highlights the benefits of grafting bony gaps during orthognathic surgery in terms of healing, stability, and aesthetic outcomes. Generally, there was no difference between the various types of bone graft, although calcium phosphate cement and hydroxyapatite were found to increase the rate of infection. The conclusion of this review is that there remains a lack of evidence in the literature regarding the grafting of osteotomy sites in orthognathic surgery. Guidelines are proposed based on the present evidence; however, future research is needed to validate these.