Elina Teodorescu
Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
Title: Myofunctional re-education – a stage in the orthopedic and orthodontic treatment of the adult patient
Biography
Biography: Elina Teodorescu
Abstract
Myofunctional therapy and dento-facial orthopedics aim to correct the skeletal dysfunction, re-direct the development processes
towards normality and they primarily act during the period of maximum growth, in the pre-puberal and puberal stage. Applied
medical research continues to demonstrate, in all fields, that “the function generates the organ”. The oral interdisciplinary restorative
therapy offers a new morphological status to the adult patient and functionally sustains, in an adequate way, a newly constituted
form. Is it thus possible to educate a new functional engram for an adult organism (fully grown and in the presence of some persistent
dysfunctions whose morphological consequences have been treated)? May it be necessary and worthy that the therapeutic protocol
of orthodontic correction and oral rehabilitation of the adult, having functional disorders, includes a stage of myofunctional reeducation?
Our clinical results, dynamic evaluation and cephalometric observations on 108 cases, lead to the conclusion that, using
functional appliances like activator in the final phase of an orthodontic treatment in adults helps prevent orthodontic relapse and
correct breathing, swallowing and occlusal disorders. This approach provides progressive balance of facial antagonic muscle groups
and functional matrix, improving even more the esthetic outcome, adaptation and training of a proper 3D TMJ complex position and
function, and sometimes its morphology. Through all these, the myofunctional phase significantly increases a dynamic functional
stability, including adequate function of the facial muscles and neuromuscular answer following orthognathic surgery. Later on, the
same patient would have less treatment needs of oral rehabilitation.