The effects of nasomaxillary injury on future facial growth.

The appearance of results of injury to the columella, the nasal septum, and the nasal bones, in particular, has been well described. Anomalies of the maxilla and global facial balance secondary to nasomaxillary injury are less well known. Three cases involving children, aged 11, 14, and 17 years, who had suffered nasomaxillary injury at least 8 years earlier as a result of physical beating, were studied with the use of photographs and architectural craniofacial lateral cephalometric radiographic analysis. The architectural craniofacial analysis of Delaire produced a graphic representation of the resultant maxillofacial deformities rather than a description of the deformities in terms of deviation from a statistical mean. Traumatic injury to the nasomaxillary complex provides an experimental model that implicates the role of the cartilaginous nasal septum and local functional conditions in the growth of the nasomaxillary complex. The importance of the functional premaxillary skeletal unit in balanced facial growth allows better understanding of the pathophysiology of malformation of this region.