Treatment of adolescents with Hansaplate/headgear. Influence on face in profile and on dentition

The treatment effects of Hansaplate/headgear in the course of 1 year were analyzed. Twenty-one girls and 19 boys, 10 and 11 years old, respectively, with postnormal occlusion and an average overjet of 8 mm, made up the treatment group. Forty untreated patients with the same type of malocclusion and dentofacial morphology as the treated children, and paired and matched for sex and age, made up the controls. Measurements were obtained from cephalometric headfilms. Matched-intrapairs analysis of control versus treatment changes after 1 year of treatment was done. This showed that the treatment resulted in inhibited sagittal growth of the maxilla, increased anterior face height and a flattened soft tissue profile with a less protrusive upper lip and a less pronounced sulcus mentolabialis. The overjet decreased by 5 mm on average. Only slight retroclination of the upper incisors without extrusion and retroclination of lower incisors to the mandibular plane occurred. No significant anterior positioning of the mandible as compared with the controls was recorded in this study.