Purpose: To comparing the efficacy of noncompression, malleable, thin 2.0 mm titanium non locking miniplates (group A) with 2.3 mm and 1.8mm(upper and lower border) titanium locking miniplates (group B) in the treatment of mandibular fractures.

Materials and Methods: A prospective randomized study analyzing 20 patients with undisplaced or minimally displaced mandibular fractures having insignificant medical history. The data was randomly collected from the patients visiting the Department of Oral and Maxillo- Facial Surgery, Gitam dental college and hospital. The cases were randomly selected for open reduction and internal fixation with 2.0 mm titanium non locking miniplate (10 cases) group A and group B (10 cases) with1.8mm and 2.3 mm titanium locking plates with respective screws.

Results: Statistical analysis was done using Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon matched pairs test. The results done with Mann-Whitney U test suggested that the comparison of performance with both locking and non locking plates was not found to be statistically significant (p-value <0.05)

Conclusion: Locking plate design comes from the same idea of better fixation and stability. We compared the latest technique of locking plate design with the conventional miniplates and found no statistical significance, by which we can infer that even though there is theoretical advantage for this design practically it does not give better outcome.

Keywords: Titanium miniplates, Non locking miniplates, Locking miniplates, Mandibular fractures.

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Dr Adigarla Sudheer

Post Graduate student, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery,

GITAM Dental College and Hospital, Visakhapatnam.

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