If your lower jaw is elongated or longer than the upper jaw, then the upper teeth line is way inside the lower teeth line. The bite produced there off is termed as off-bite or under bite. In cases where the lower jaw elongates way more and grows past the upper jaw, the gap may be wider between the two teeth lines. This is an extreme condition which warrants orthognathic surgery.
Any surgery that is performed to correct the conditions of a Jaw and on the face that has relation to the jaw, is termed as Orthognathic Surgery.
Preparing yourself for Orthognathic surgery
The Orthognathic surgeon is not going to directly perform your surgery. Since the change is going to be done on how you look basically, multi disciplinary dental professionals are involved in correcting the jaw structure. Hence along with the Orthognathic surgeon, your orthodontist and your maxillafacial surgeon are also involved initially.
Removal of Wisdom Teeth
Usually the wisdom teeth are removed by your maxillofacial surgeon. The reason why the wisdom teeth are removed is because, the wisdom teeth if it has not fully emerged, may cause crowding after the orthognathic correction procedure has been performed and it can turn things topsy-turvy. To prevent that from happening, the wisdom teeth are removed.
After the wisdom teeth removal, the oral area has to heal. It may take a minimum of two to three months for the healing process to get completed.
The Next Phase of Putting up with Braces
Once the wisdom teeth is removed, the orthodontist job is to position your bite to the post-operative bite position. To achieve this he would fix the braces. When the orthodontist aligns the braces, you may experience discomfort with the positioning initially but only to subside later as you get your jaw corrected for the right position.
You may have to be put up with the orthodontics for couple of months to correct and position the bite before going in for the jaw correction surgery performed by the orthognathic surgeon. You may want to know that if some people have minor bite problems, the braces themselves would suffice. Since here the case is of elongated lower jaw, only an orthognathic surgery at the end would provide respite from it.
In our next post, we will check on how the lower jaw surgery proceeds and what precautions to take once the surgery is over.