Abstract Background and Purpose Accelerated tooth movement is facilitated by intentional injury of the periodontium followed by alveolar bone turnover, and bone biomarkers can be used to monitor bone turnover activity. The purpose of this literature review was to evaluate various surgical acceleration techniques using catabolic bone biomarkers to discriminate among rapid orthodontic techniques, such as corticotomy, micro-osteoperforations, and corticision. Methods Scholarly literature was searched for bone marker levels associated with orthodontic surgical acceleration techniques. Key inclusion criteria were both tooth movement only (TM-O) and accelerated tooth movement (TM-A) data in the same article to normalized data per article using the fold-change concept, that is, ratio between tooth movement accelerated and tooth movement only (i.e., TM-A/TM-O). Results Twelve publications provided bone biomarker ratio data. During 21 days following initiation of tooth movement plus corticotomy technique, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) levels elevated approximately 2.3 times greater and pre-osteoclast and/or osteoclast counts ascertained by tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) averaged 1.5 to nearly 4.0 times greater in TM-A than TM-O. The trend demonstrated elevated catabolic biomarkers during the 2 or 3 weeks immediately following application of the TM-A technique. Conclusions Data from bone biomarkers TRAP and TNFα clearly showed differences between TM-O and TM-A, but the differences were not enough to discriminate catabolic bone activity among the acceleration techniques corticotomy, micro-osteoperforation, and corticision.