Fabrication of surgical splint by using of surgical jaw relator

Yang, Sang Duck

Abstract

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 method requires more accuracy for better postsurgical results in that the surgical splint which enables the surgeon to position the jaws intraoperatively is made from the casts as repositioned by the model surgery, and finally it will define the postsurgical results. 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, was 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.