Two-jaw surgery by use of Surgical Jaw Relator

Yang, Sang Duck

Abstract

The contemporary two-jaw surgical approach usually involves a Le Fort osteotomy of the maxilla and a ramal osteotomy of the mandible with 3-dimensional repositioning of the jaws as well as the occlusal planes. After making the surgical treatment plan, the surgical movements are duplicated in the model surgery. During this procedure, reference points and lines are drawn on the base of the models over the dental arch, and sawcuts are made according to these marked osteotomy lines. This technique, however, has been found to be inexact, especially when the jaws are moved in several dimensions simultaneously. To overcome this, different methods have been developed for an accurate repositioning of the jaws as planned. A new appliance, Surgical Jaw Relator, has been devised by the author for the simple 3-dimensional relocation of the upper and lower models, resulting in the easy construction of the splints such as centric relation splint, intermediate and final splint. This article describes an introduction and a clinical application of this appliance. Through the application of this system to the orthognathic cases including two-jaw surgery, it is proved that the new device is very clinically useful.