Nguyen Wins the 2012 Helen and BF Dewel Award
Dr. Tung Nguyen, assistant professor in the Department of Orthodontics, was recently named the recipient of the 2012 Helen and BF Dewel Award from the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics (AJO-DO).
The Dewel Award is given annually to the highest-rated clinical research article published in the AJO-DO during the previous year. In 2011, AJO-DO published over 250 articles. Of those, Nguyen’s article, “Three-dimensional assessment of maxillary changes associated with bone-anchored maxillary protraction,” was chosen by the award selection panel as the most outstanding of 2011.
“I’m honored to be named the recipient of the Dewel Award,” said Nguyen. “Knowing that AJO-DO selected our article as the most outstanding of 2011 is humbling, and I’m pleased that they recognized the collaborative efforts between the University of North Carolina and Brussels, Belgium in this developing field of orthodontics.”
The article examines use of bone plates and intermaxillary elastics in growing children to correct Class III malocclusions. Conventional treatments for Class III malocclusion on growing children have limited success with many of these patients requiring orthognathic surgery upon the completion of growth. The study evaluated 25 consecutively-treated patients using this new treatment protocol and showed it produced significant orthopedic protraction of the maxilla and zygomas as well as restraint of the mandible.
“The results have been very promising and we plan to expand our study for use in the treatment of craniofacial deformities and clefts. However, we still need more research to evaluate the long-term stability of this protocol,” said Nguyen.
Nguyen will receive the award on Saturday, May 5 at the annual AJO-DO editorial board meeting which is held in conjunction with the annual American Association of Orthodontics meeting taking place in Hawaii.
