This book is dedicated to my mentor and role model, Dr. T. M. Graber. An outstanding teacher is not only a leader but a patient listener. Dr. Graber had an uncanny ability to engage all students in the learning process. As a role model, he was able to influence students not only in academics but within the community as well. His investment and attention to my own works with RME activation has become the crowning achievement of my career: the importance of changing tongue posture by using RME with chin cup to open the airway and avoid the tongue encroaching the mandible to decelerate the mandibular growth and also enhance the maxilla and nasal bone advancement. It would be possible to change the children’s growth pattern.
We have paid so much attention to the dentition and the skeleton that we sometimes forgot the major impact the tongue can do to affect the malocclusion. To treat patients with maxillary deficiency, mandibular prognathism, or a combination of both is always a challenge. The focus of this text is to introduce an orthodontic therapy provided to mixed dentition patients and adolescents. The goals of early treatment are to: (1) prevent progressive, irreversible soft-tissue or bony changes; (2) improve skeletal discrepancies and provide a more favorable environment for normal growth; (3) improve occlusal function; (4) enhance and possibly shorten phase II comprehensive treatment; (5) avoid anterior crowding and cuspids impaction; (6) and, provide more pleasing facial esthetics, thus improving the psychosocial development of the child; and (7) improve the patient’s respiration by changing their breathing pattern from an oral to a nasal approach.
As orthodontists, we should take heed on this principle and consider the possibility of redirecting the growth pattern and improving the patient’s respiration by changing their breathing pattern from an oral to a nasal approach. Perhaps, you should give this a try.