Long-term airway evolution after orthognathic surgery: Systematic Review

Orthognathic surgery is a procedure that consists of correcting the abnormalities of the maxilla, mandible or both. Maxillary movements have a direct effect on the upper airways. For this reason, in the preoperative period, bone movements should be carefully analyzed and planned to avoid causing any damages to the airways. The goal of this study was to discuss the long-term evolution of the airways after orthognathic surgery. In order to do that, a search was performed through the databases PubMed, Virtual Health Library (VHL) and Scopus, using the acronym PICO strategy and a guiding question to conduct the search. Through the keywords and boolean operators "and" and "or" we found 930 articles. After reading the titles, abstracts and application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, we had 21 articles that were studied in their integrity. At the end of the selection, only 8 studies were included in the review. The postoperative evaluations from the selected studies showed that the airways suffered variations, independently of the patient's facial pattern. In addition, the airways tend to return to initial volumes, but none of the included studies obtained a complete return to the initial airways, even 6 years after surgery. Therefore, more studies with controlled methodologies should be conducted in order to have a better understanding of the airways and their changes.