Gingival recession and labial movement of lower incisors.

DATA SOURCES: Medline, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and reference lists of articles meeting the inclusion criteria.

STUDY SELECTION: To be included, the studies had to be clinical trials with multiple cases, looking at orthodontic treatment involving labial movement of lower incisors and gingival recession in these teeth.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Two authors reviewed all abstracts independently, compared results and reached consensus on inclusion/exclusion through discussion. Quality assessment of the studies was carried out using one of the authors' own scoring systems.

RESULTS

There were six studies with a total of 690 participants. No studies were RCTs, all were retrospective and two had no controls. The outcomes measured were the percentage of teeth and/or patients with recession >0.5mm and proclination of the lower incisors as measured by the angle between the mandibular plane and the long axis of the most prominent incisor. The times the measurements were taken at varied from immediately following appliance removal to eight years after removal. Outcomes were measured using various combinations of lateral cephalograms, dental casts, intra-oral colour photographs and assessment of gingival condition. All six studies found no increased risk of gingival recession after labial movement of the mandibular incisors following orthodontic treatment.

CONCLUSIONS

There was no association between appliance-induced labial movement of mandibular incisors and gingival recession.