Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Objective: To study the synergetic effect of low intensity pulsed ultrasound on the local injection of bFGF into the posterior attachment of mandible condyle on mandibular growth Methods: 6 Sprague Dawley rats were divided into 3 groups namely: control, bFGF, bFGF+LIPUS. The control group received 25microgm of gWiz, bFGF group received 25 microgrm of bFGF on the first day of the experiment. The third group received same amount of bFGF on the first day and was treated with 20 min daily application of LIPUS for the next 28 days. The left mandible was used as the experimental side. After 28 days, the rats were eutahnised and the mandibles were harvested for histomorphometric analysis. Total 12 samples from each group were analyzed for the proliferative cells, hypertrophic cells, thickness and the area in the anterior, middle and posterior segments in each slide. The data was processed with SPSS for Window release 19.0.0 using One-Way ANOVA and Bonferroni Post-doc test at p=0.05 Results: Both bFGF and bFGF+LIPUS groups have statistical significant (p<0.05) effect on the mandibular growth when compared to the control group. There was significant increase in the number of proliferative and hypertrophic cells, thickness and area in the groups treated with bFGF which is followed by the ultrasound treated bFGF group when compared to the control group. Conclusion: Both the treatments bFGF and LIPUS have positive effect on the mandibular condylar growth as compared to the control. being pilot study with only sample size 2, the results are inconclusive. Further research needs to be conducted with larger number of animals and with other analysis methods to have more conclusive results.