Reader’s Forum

Abstract

I appreciate the article by the authors to evaluate three-dimensional movements of the bony segments after mandibular setback orthognathic surgery with mini-plate and semi-rigid sliding plate fixation. As a reader, I would like to ask several questions to better understand the results. We appreciate this valuable opportunity to discuss our study and hope this following explanation would be helpful to our readers. A1.Bone remodeling process generally takes 6 months. Therefore after 6 months, the reference points of the bone could be considered as stable. Also there are many other previous researches which used 6 months of period for stability. In addition, plate removal is done 6 months after surgery which means after this period, we cannot measure the location of screws. Of course, as lower incisors move, there is a chance of remodeling of B-point.1 However all patients underwent orthodontic treatment before surgery, and there was not much change to lower incisors in anteroposterior locations after surgery. Therefore B-point could be used as stable reference point. Also this point is considered most reasonable reference point for mandibular distal segment. A2.Usually the voxel size of CBCT is 0.1-0.3 mm. If voxel size gets smaller, more accurate measurement will be possible.