Fuctional Jaw Orthopedics and Myofunctional Therapy: A Multidisciplinary Possibility

Ioná COMIN, Lenine Pereira dos PASSOS FILHO

One of the great doubts of orthodontists and speech therapists concerns to the indication of myofunctional therapy aimed to the reestablishment of oral functions in patients treated with functional jaw orthopedic appliances. Speech therapists, in the area of oral motricity, acts through a group of procedures for reeducation of inadequate muscular patterns, directed to rehabilitation of oral functions. In order to achieve stabi-lity and health of stomatognathic system. Since functional jaw orthopedics proposes the correction of malocclu-sions though appliances that also seek for functional normalization, the purpose of this work was to gather important publications on this subject in order to investigate whether functional jaw orthopedics can really carry out this normaliza-tion without the aid of myofunctio-nal therapy. From data obtained in this bibliographical review we found that myofunctional therapy accomplished by speech therapy is not by itself substitutive for functional appliances, neither such appliances can assure satisfactory results on functional correction in all cases. We concluded that there is a need for related work between functional jaw orthopedics and speech therapy, in many cases, so that morphologic and functional normalization can be achieved. However, functional evaluation, diagnosis and indication of complementary miofunctional therapy belong to the speech therapist.

Keywords: Functional jaw orthopedics. Oral motricity. Myofunc-tional therapy. Orthodontics. Speech therapy.

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