Diagnosis & Surgery

So what exactly is the "diagnosis"? What will they do to fix it? There are a lot of big words in the official paperwork. I will do my best to translate, but you may need a search engine handy ...

Here goes-

• Anteroposterior (from front to back)-
  

*Dental Problems- I have a Class I on both the left and the right. It seems this is the most "normal" or "ideal" bite; however mine is very unstable and slips into a Class III which means my top teeth behind the bottom.

* Facial Problems- My orbital rim is flat; cheekbones are soft; subpupil is flat; nasal base is concave; upper lip is retruded; lower lip is retruded; and finally my chin is yep, you guessed it...retruded...

• Vertical

* Vertical Skeletal and Dental Problems (I do not understand the following, but it is not the way it needs to be for jaw stability)- Maxillary plane of occlusion- two plane. Also, my posterior maxilla height is short.

*Vertical Facial Problems (where my asymmetry comes into play I believe...): Maxillary canines, mandibular canines, mandibular inferior border, and chin inferior border are all down on the left by 1 mm.

I will also need inferior reposition on the antierier to increase incisor exposure in relaxed and smile positions, my jaw will be rotated to the left 1 mm to align dental with facial midlines and align maxillary dental with mandibular dental midline.

My jaw will be broken in multisegment to: increase transverse width to match mandible, flatten cuve of Spee, increase overbite, change arch form to match mandible.....


Whewwwww! That's about it. To many a 1 mm change doesn't sound like that much, but in your face even the slightest difference changes how everything is supported!

The best layman terms I can think of for all of the above is this:

Sawing both jaws in more than one place "multisegment" on the upper and "bilateral" on the bottom. I will have cheekbone augmentations (implants) because when they move my jaw forward and up the center of my face needs to be balanced out for asthetics. I do not want to end up with a concave face after this is all done. Being that this portion is cosmetic it, isn't covered under insurance...awesome.

I'm not scared about any of the changes to my face, I have had three years to mull over this and to fully trust my surgeon will make the best asthetic changes he can while fixing my jaw. I am mostly worried about the risk of permenant nerve damage. When they do the surgery they cut all the nerves. They say it will take up to a year to know if you will have the feeling back in your face.

That's it for now...hopefuly I'll be able to get some pictures up at some point to show my bite, facial asymytry, and the changes my face has already gone through in the last three years via splint therapy and braces.