The Anterior Open Bite - what is it?

I have spoken extensively about what this is in my previous posts. And as pictures are worth a 1000 words, the following image is of another sexy poor sod with the condition:

BEFORE:



A patient prior to treatment in Japan with an Anterior open bite, and long face syndrome. She does not however have a slanted bottom jaw, or a narrow upper arch (crossbite) unlike myself.





Despite looking like I have no problems at all physically, given that I am a relatively attractive guy. If you look closely you will notice that I do suffer from an AOB just from my outer appearance with my mouth shut. I have a) long face syndrome b) my bottom jaw is not aligned at the centre of my face, you can see that my chin slants the right - which this woman does not suffer from. The big give away however is a weak "pointy" jawline. So not only will my bottom jaw need to be respositioned (or reset), my teeth also need extensive work on as shown from the next batch of photos, me smiling with teeth:



My bite.

In the above photos you can see how narrow my upper set of teeth are in comparison to my bottom set of teeth. The purpose of my first operation SARPE is to correct this by expanding my upper jawline so that it is the same size (width wise) as my bottom jaw.

By doing SARPE first, this will ensure that I will have a perfect bite once they operate on my bottom jaw to close the gap between my top and bottom teeth.

BEFORE & AFTER:






Same patient after successful treatment two years later. You can see that the longness of her face has been reduced, much more defined jaw-line (pointyness has gone), her teeth now touch, and her smile is great. This at the moment is the best example of how I expect my face to change after everything is completed, and although the changes are subtle, her physical appearance has changed ever-so slightly. From an aesthetic point of view, incidently, oral facial maxillofacial specialists refer to this type of physical change as "bringing balance" to ones face during the correction of ones bite.

So to conclude this post, an anterior open bite is one where ones top and bottom teeth do not touch as shown above. When ones jaw is narrow, and this could be either/or both the upper or bottom jaw, is technically referred to as a "crossbite".

References:

Severe Anterior Open-Bite Case Treated Using Titanium Screw Anchorage

http://www.angle.org/anglonline/?request=get-document&issn=0003-3219&volume=074&issue=04&page=0558