I've noticed some papers talking about a resurgence in interest in this procedure. Basically, BSSO have become the workhorse of the industry and while it can produce good occlusions, it's not the ideal procedure to fix the problems. Most of us have some amount of ramus hypoplasia, those with open bites tend to have more. It has less risk of paresthesia but surgeons haven't liked it because it's not as stable and harder for the surgeon to work in that area. And, it only makes a notable difference over BSSO in the most extreme cases. I am, however, one of those cases. I note that in syndrome cases surgeons are using DO or bone grafts to address stability, mostly in kids. However, seeing some cephs their deformities don't seem all that different than mine. Mandibular plane angles of 40deg+. I'm wondering if this is worth looking into further. Some guys who wrote a chapter in a textbook on this stuff happen to be located in my city. I heard the names before but dismissed it because they were plastic surgeons, not oral surgeons. What do you all think? Should I pay them a visit?
Here are
the surgeons I'm looking at now. Two of them wrote the chapter on DO in Ferraro's Principles of Orthognathic surgery. They don't have a lot of publications but the group isn't too old. The hospital is brand new so I'd guess maybe 5 years? Anyway, the research areas among the surgeons are quite diverse and interesting for these types of problems and because they're handling a lot of kids, I'd bet they have quite a bit of experience in dealing with complex problems. When the deformities become significant enough, maybe a difference skillset is required to deal with them, that's all I'm saying. Of the cephs I've seen around, most people don't seem to fall into that category.