Facial reconstructive surgery
It has been stated that some degree of facial asymmetry maybe perhaps be one of the causes of human attractiveness. Normal asymmetries such as these often go unnoticed by the general public. Esthetically pleasing and apparently symmetrical faces do indeed exhibit skeletal asymmetries and one side of the face can be rather different from the other and still be considered completely normal and even attractive to some extent. The level at which asymmetry becomes unacceptable to a patient is variable and depends on many factors, most of which are psychological. Females are more likely to want to correct facial asymmetries than males. Those who required facial corrective actions required orthomorphic surgery.
One such patient visited our hospital to get her facial asymmetry fixed as she was now approaching marriageable age and hence wanted to fit into our society criteria’s of beauty. She was a case of TMJ ankylosis treated when she was a child, however, even after the treatment this facial asymmetry prevailed. Unilateral temporomandibular joint ankylosis occurring during the active growth period if left without treatment, or when improperly treated, is often complicated by the development of secondary changes in the structure, shape, and size of the mandible together with the surrounding tissues.
We carried out a presurgical workup for her and planned to treat her with a newer modality of treatment known as Orthomorphic surgery.
What is Orthomorphic Surgery?
When the cause of the deformity includes alteration of the shape of the jaws, orthognathic surgery is unable to correct the resulting contour deformity. For this reason in the management of facial asymmetry, orthomorphic principles of management are an adjunct to orthognathic surgery. The orthomorphic correction aims to correct deformities related to shape and contour of the jaws without affecting the status of occlusion, thus the bite of the patient is maintained as the same post-surgery.
After getting a full pre-surgical workup, Dr. Sunil Richardson performed a mandibular orthomorphic surgery on this patient. Her facial asymmetry was fixed by performing mandibular osteotomy procedures. Orthomorphic surgery procedures are one of the newer modalities of Craniofacial surgery and are being commonly done here at Richardson dental and craniofacial Hospital. The surgery takes around 2 hours with an in-hospital recovery time of two days after which the patient can resume his/her daily routine. We believe that in this day and age, we need to adapt our surgical methods to match up with the ever-growing technological development. Surgeries are these are commonly done at our hospital and have given us good long-term results as well.