7.1 Keeping MARPE in Its Lane
What MARPE Can and Can't Do
This is Chapter 7.1 of the JawHacks ebook. See the full Table of Contents here.
Keep MARPE in Its Lane
From 2019-2022, MARPE grew a reputation of being a magic bullet for those seeking real, skeletal jaw change rather than tooth flaring via dental expansion.
It gained this reputation because at a glance, MARPE appears to be a Golden Mean between ineffective, dangerous tooth-borne expanders and highly invasive double jaw surgery.
And there has certainly been a lot of truth to the hype. MARPE has safely provided many patients with significant, skeletal gains in oral and nasal volume, and wider arches and cheekbones.
But as thousands of cases played out, we saw that MARPE was more dangerous than initially thought, while also less effective at treating the anterior/posterior problem that is at the core of many patients’ functional and cosmetic complaints.
MARPE was in fact not replacing jaw surgery in terms of patient outcomes. And it was not perfectly safe, by any means.
This does not mean MARPE should be thrown out completely.
Instead, it means MARPE should be used in a more modest and targeted way, to accomplish the treatment objectives that it is particularly suited for — things that it does better than jaw surgery.
Conversely, it means not attempting to use MARPE to do the things that only jaw surgery can do, as this is when MARPE becomes especially dangerous.
MARPE Out of Its Lane is Like a Vegan Diet
MARPE taken out of its comfort zone becomes like a vegan diet - an incredible amount of supplementation becomes necessary to try and make it work.
And even then, it remains a struggle.
Below are 4 examples of taking MARPE outside of its lane, asking it to do too much.
And it’s when we push MARPE too hard that the worst complications such as over-expansion and severe asymmetry occur.