PHARYNGEAL AIRWAY VOLUME FOLLOWING ...

surgical therapies and single-site surgeries have been
unsuccessful. 18 Many advocates of MMA surgery recommend
this procedure as a first surgical option in patients who
have been diagnosed with multiples levels of airway
collapse and those with craniofacial skeletal
abnormalities. 18-20
Analyzing lateral cephalograms in patients following
maxillomandibular advancement surgery, significant
increases in airway size have been reported in patients
with sleep apnea 21-23 and in patients without sleep apnea. 24,25
Following an initial increase in airway size, some studies
reported a decrease in airway size 3.5 years 26 and 4 years
post-surgery, 27 although the airway did not return to pre-
surgical values.
Recognizing that measurements taken from a lateral
cephalogram do not evaluate changes in the transverse
dimension, Fairburn et al. 28 examined transverse and
sagittal airway changes and showed a significant increase
in airway size 2-dimensionally at multiple levels of the
pharyngeal airway.
Recent studies have examined airway volume in order to
obtain a more accurate understanding of how the pharyngeal
airway changes following orthognathic surgery. Two
studies 2,29 have examined 3-dimensional airway changes
26