Assessment of Relapse Following Surgical Lip Repositioning With and Without Botulinum Toxin Injection in Management of Excessive Gingival Display

Abstract

Excessive Gingival Display (EGD) is a common feature where many patients find it displeasing and hence seek treatment to enhance it. Lip repositioning surgery was introduced as a solution for elimination of EGD caused by hyperactive lip. However, relapse was shown to occur despite it was not adequately reported in literature. Moreover, all published literature was case studies and lacked long term follow-up for the cases. The aim of our research is to assess the relapse resulting from the lip repositioning surgery and the adjunctive use of BTX-A injections with the surgery, provided with a long term follow-up. Twenty patients were allocated and divided randomly into two groups. The study group had BTX-A injections followed by lip repositioning surgery while the control group underwent the surgery alone. All patients were planned to undergo standardized photographic assessment pre-operative, one, three, six and nine months post-operative. Nine measurements had bee