Forsus Fixed Appliance and Elastics Effects on Airway Volume

Objectives: Determine airway volume changes in Class II patients treated with Forsus Resistance Fatigue (FRF) or with elastics.
Methods: 29 patients diagnosed as Class II with an average age of 12.7 years were included in this study. The sample was divided into two groups (group1: elastics and group 2: Forsus). CBCT's scans before (T1) and after treatment (T2) were obtained. Dolphin software was used to segment the oropharyngeal airway on all scans. Treatment duration time average was 1.07 years in Elastics and 1.79 years in Forsus. Reliability was obtained using Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). Descriptive statistics, ANOVA and paired t-test were used for analysis.
Results: Reliability for the airway volume determination was excellent presenting an ICC score of >0.985.
Elastic group presented a total airway increase between maximum 2.72% to 63.53%. The oropharyngeal airway presented an increase of 17.72% to 95.68%.
Forsus group presented a total airway increase between 12% to 97.7%. The oropharyngeal airway presented an increase of 29.1% to 106.9%.
There was a statistically significant difference between T1 and T2 in the total airway area for both groups. (p<0.05) In the oropharyngeal airway, the Forsus group presented statistically significant increase where the elastic group did not.
There was no statistically significant difference between groups in the total airway (p=0.39) and in the oropharyngeal airway (p=0.919).
Regarding sex, 90% of the males presented an increase of airway volume while only 38.89% of the females obtained positive airway effect.
Conclusions: Treatment with Forsus and Elastics in Class II patients promoted improvement in the airway volume. Between the two groups, FRF showed the highest change in the both measured areas. Male patients obtained a greater improvement.