RME effect on orbital volume in growing patient—retrospective study

To evaluate changes in the volume of orbital cavities in growing patients undergoing tooth-borne rapid maxillary expansion using a three-dimensional (3D) digital technology that analyzed models derived from cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). The study included before and after CBCT images acquired from patients diagnosed with skeletal transverse deficiency that undergone rapid maxillary expansion (comprising 26 females and 17 males, with an average age of 7.5±0.75 years). With the help of MIMICS Medical software, pretreatment and posttreatment CBCTs were used to generate segmentation masks for soft tissues and two reference planes, creating 3D models of each orbit. These models were then exported to the 3-Matic Medical software for further analysis. In addition, to determine the actual orbital volume changes from CBCT data, an anticipated growth-related increase in orbital volume was estimated based on published evidence indicating that orbital volume expands by 1% to 2% annually during childhood until late adolescence. A paired Student’s t-test was applied to compare actual posttreatment volumes to the expected physiological growth. Statistical results revealed no significant difference (p>0.05) between the measured orbital volume following rapid maxillary expansion and the predicted physiological growth volume. Therefore, according to this study, tooth-borne rapid maxillary expansion does not appear to have a significant impact on orbital cavity volume in growing patients.