Radiographic evaluation of the effects of Distal Jet appliance in intraoral distalizations: a pilot study

Giordani Santos SILVEIRA, Luiz Fernando ETO

The treatment of Class II malocclusion frequently requires maxillary molars’ distalization. The extraoral appliance was the irst created with this aim. It has proved its eficiency along the course of more than a century of its use. It presents, however, as a great disadvantage, the negative esthetic aspect, since its results depend on systematic patient cooperation. Thus, many intraoral distalizing appliances were developed with the speciic aim of eliminating the need of patient cooperation.The one of them is the Distal Jet. According to Carano and Testa (1996) it is the only intraoral mechanism capable of distalizing molar of bodily. A pilot study was developed to evaluate the effect of this appliance. It used six adolescents (average age: 13.08), who had dental Class II malocclusion and a standard face pattern in common. Lateral headilms were used before and after the treatment. The average time length was 4.5 months. Soft tissues, skeletal and dental changes were determined, comparing the measurements of the initial and inal cephalograms. The items that varied signiicantly according to the Wilcoxon test were crown distal tipping of the second molar, distal movement of the irst molar and distal movement of the second molar. The Distal Jet proved itself to be eficient in the upper molars’ distalization mainly by the small component of distal tipping of the irst molars. The anchorage loss and the increase in the lower anterior face height did not present statistical signiicance.

Keywords: Class II malocclusion. Intraoral distalizing appliances. Distal Jet.

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