Abstract
Prolonged orthodontic treatments have inconvenienced patients and clinicians alike.
Surgically assisted techniques for accelerating orthodontic tooth movement have shown
promising results in the literature over the years. The minimally invasive nature
of micro-osteoperforations (MOPs), however, for enhanced orthodontic tooth movement
has recently gained momentum, with many clinical trials conducted on both animals
and humans. An electronic search was performed to extract papers using PubMed, Google
Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. The keywords that were used included “MOP,” “accelerating
tooth movement,” “orthodontic tooth movement,” and “regional acceleratory phenomenon.”
The studies that met our inclusion criteria were extracted and evaluated in this review.
MOPs have been proven time and again, in animal and human studies alike, to increase
the rate of orthodontic tooth movement. The application of perforations to cortical
bone present in the pathway of teeth, which are specifically to be moved creates transient
osteopenia. This reduces the density of the cortical bone, hence speeding up the rate
of orthodontic tooth movement. Many techniques have been implemented and perfected
to enhance orthodontic tooth movement and shorten the treatment time in the literature.
MOPs have proven to be a universally applied, nontechnical, repeatable, and minimally
invasive method of accelerating tooth movement, with extremely minimal consequences.
Keywrds
orthodontic - tooth movement - accelerated tooth movement - micro-osteoperforation
- and regional acceleratory phenomenon
