No difference in surgical outcomes between Open and Closed exposure of palatally displaced maxillary canines

Purpose: To investigate differences in the surgical outcomes between Open and Closed exposure for palatally displaced maxillary cuspids (PDC).

Methods: A multicenter, RCT involving two parallel groups. The settings were one dental teaching hospital in, and two hospital units near Sheffield, UK. Participants were aged <20 years with a unilateral PDC, who provided informed consent. They were randomly allocated to either receive the Open (O) or the Closed (C) surgical procedure. The outcomes were time spent in the operating room and 10-day post-operative patient questionnaire. Statistical differences between the two techniques were tested using independent t tests for continuous variables and chi-squared tests for frequencies.

Results: The final study sample was composed of 71 participants (64% females). There were no differences in the gender ratios (O: F=27, M=13; C: F=25, M=16) or mean ages of the two groups (O: 14.3 yrs SD 1.3; C: 14.1 yrs SD 1.6) at the start. The mean operating times for the Open and Closed techniques were 34.3 mins (SD 11.2) and 34.3 mins (SD 11.9) respectively (p=.986). There were no statistically significant differences between the two treatment groups for any of the patient-assessed outcomes (p>.05).

Conclusions: There were no differences in the surgical outcomes investigated in this study between Open and Closed exposure for PDC.