IAFGG brings clinicians together to study facial growth guidance, oral function and developing facial form through education and professional exchange.
Occlusal and craniofacial traits reflect both inherited and environmental influences.
Guiding the developing face and jaws during the active growth period.
Recognizing nasal breathing and airway development as essential to healthy growth.
Understanding structure, balance and development as part of one growing system.
Identifying functional patterns before they become structural problems.
Clinical decisions should begin with a diagnosis, individual growth pattern and shared decision-making.
Assessment of a growing child may include the teeth and jaws, facial growth pattern, breathing history, oral habits, tongue and lip function, swallowing, and relevant medical factors. Findings may call for dental, orthodontic, medical, ear-nose-and-throat, speech-language or other specialist input.
Breathing, tongue and lip posture, swallowing and chewing interact with the orofacial system. Studies report associations with dental arches and craniofacial form, especially in growing children.
Each domain is considered in context. None is treated as a single cause, and every intervention begins with diagnosis.
One of the most important aspects of orofacial function is comfortable nasal breathing and the ability to maintain relaxed lip closure. These features should be assessed as part of the overall clinical picture.
Persistent mouth breathing may have different causes, including nasal or upper-airway obstruction, and may require further dental, medical, ENT or sleep assessment.
At rest, the teeth should ideally be in light, relaxed contact. During function, chewing should be comfortable, coordinated and efficient.
Assessment includes the occlusion, dental arches and masticatory function, considering the individual’s growth and overall orofacial development.
At rest, the tongue should ideally be positioned broadly against the palate, with gentle contact and a stable intraoral seal or “vacuum”.
It is important to assess tongue mobility, the lingual frenulum, resting posture and functional movement. These factors may influence oral function, swallowing, feeding and speech.
Swallowing should be smooth, coordinated and efficient, without unnecessary recruitment of the lips, chin or other facial muscles. Ideally, swallowing should occur without visible facial strain or excessive movement of the soft tissues.
Head, neck and body posture are relevant parts of the overall orofacial assessment. A balanced posture should allow the head and neck to remain comfortably aligned without unnecessary muscular tension.
The symposium is the heart of the association: where cases are shown, methods are questioned and generations meet. Around it, the IAFGG maintains its professional correspondence, governance and historical archive.
The twentieth international symposium marks the association's first meeting in South America — for a community founded in 1987 that has since convened across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. Experienced clinicians and newcomers, around presented cases, treatment technique, and the questions that will shape the next decade.
Members attend at preferential rates. Case presentations are welcomed through the association.
Buenos Aires, host of the 20th Symposium
The archive is being restored edition by edition — programmes, photographs and recordings added as they are recovered from members' collections. It grows through its members: if you hold materials from a past symposium, the association would be glad to receive them.
Archive contributions and enquiries are welcomed through association correspondence.
The association's return to Seoul, hosted by the regional clinical community.
Source: project register “INTERNATIONAL IAFGG SYMPOSIUMS”. Entries marked as unresolved require archival confirmation.
The International Association of Facial Growth Guidance is established.
For membership, symposium and archive matters, or to reach the association's officers:
The association is governed by its officers and council, elected from the membership. Officers, statutes and minutes are published to members.
The IAFGG is a professional association of clinicians and technicians. Membership is a working relationship: members learn from one another, present to one another, and carry the field forward together.
Join the association and receive an oriented introduction to the field: the essential reading, the history of the discipline, and how the community works — so the first months have a shape.
Train through recognised courses and alongside experienced members. Case discussion — presenting, listening, questioning — is the association's oldest habit, and every member is welcome in it.
In time, members carry the work themselves: teaching, presenting at symposia, helping restore the archive, hosting meetings, and accompanying those who arrive after them.
A tree is guided while it is young, gently and for years — not corrected after it has grown. The association works the same way with its members: patient accompaniment from the first day, and a community that measures itself in decades rather than seasons.
Membership is open to anyone with a professional or serious interest in facial growth, oral function and related areas of development. Applications are reviewed by the association's secretariat, and you will hear back by email. Membership terms are provided on application.
Members receive the association's correspondence — news, future symposia and educational activity — and take part in the community described above.
Details submitted here are used only to handle your application and, if accepted, the association's correspondence with you. See the privacy note.
How this site handles information — about its readers, its sources, and its own mistakes.
This website sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and collects nothing about its readers. The only personal information the association receives through the site is what you choose to send it — a membership application or an email. Application details (name, email, profession, country, and anything you write) are used solely to review the application and, if it is accepted, for the association's correspondence with you. They are recorded in the association's own application register, held on its hosting infrastructure, and in its secretariat correspondence and membership register — all accessible only to its authorized officers, and not shared with anyone else. You may ask at any time what is held about you, or ask for it to be corrected or deleted, by writing to the secretariat.
The association distinguishes between historical teaching, clinical observation and peer-reviewed evidence, and aims to label each as what it is. Material claims on this site are drawn from cited literature or from the association's own documented record. Where a question is open, the site says so.
Errors of fact, attribution or dating are corrected once verified. If you find one — including in the symposium archive, which is being restored edition by edition — the secretariat welcomes the correction and will record its source.
All matters — editorial, membership, archive or otherwise — reach the association through secretariat@iafgg.net. Complaints are read by the association's officers and answered in order.
Published for professional education · not individual medical advice.
