University of Maryland dental school was founded in 1840 in Baltimore
and was the first dental school in the world.
We're very proud of our history of excellence and innovation here
and the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery
strives to maintain this and innovation in clinical surgery, research and education.
Maxillofacial surgery is any surgery involving above the clavicle
to the frontal bone and not excluding the brain.
We primarily function at the Medical Center
treating high-level problems such as head and neck cancer,
patients who need facial reconstruction, patients who require
traumatic facial injury reconstruction,
pediatric patients, children with cleft lip and palate and other craniofacial disorders,
patients with TMJ problems.
All while teaching the residents how to do these things
so that they could go out and do these things on their own.
So the case I remember most, probably the first case of bilateral
cleft lip and palate that I took care of as a faculty here
and I had the opportunity to meet his mom, prenatally after she had the diagnosis made
and was able to see him when he was delivered
and provide care for him in the neonatal intensive care unit.
In addition to performing his lip repair at about 3
months of age and performing the palate repair at about a year of age.
And I've been following him along ever since and it's been about 10 years.
Transoral robotic surgery, or TORS for short form,
is the use of robotics through a minimally invasive surgical techniques
to access tumors,
especially for management of cancers of the oral cavity and oral pharynx.
There's a 16 year old girl who was referred to me to reconstruct her jaw
following removal of her condyle to the mid body
of her jaw for a malignant tumor.
After much deliberation with mom and dad,
we chose non-weight-bearing bone in her leg.
So using virtual surgery planning, we were able to
plan and map out this new jaw from her leg bone and she's done well to-date,
she's about a year and a half since her surgery.
She's participated in the Nutcracker in a lead role
and she's done really well in track and field competing in Maryland.
I had a patient who had significant vascular disease and
not able to use conventional flaps such as a fibula flap.
We used a flap with its
vascularized blood supply from the shoulder blade to reconstruct the jaw.
This is known as a scapula osteocutaneous free flap.
Patient did very well, was rehabilitated to speech and swallowing therapy
and went off for adjuvant radiation therapy
and is subsequently doing very well.
Some of the surgeries that I do combine both orthognathic surgery and
temporomandibular joint surgery.
One case was a 31 year old male who had orthognathic
surgery ten years earlier, elsewhere,
and it continued to develop a progressive
facial asymmetry, secondary to a tumor growing in his joint.
So we corrected him with orthognathic surgery and custom joint replacement.
So from the picture, you can see that there's significant improvement
in the patient's facial symmetry
and if you look at the bite, you can see a vast improvement in his bite.
This department is unique because we have all the attendees
and they have their own interest in practicing the specialty of oral maxillofacial surgery.
We have people that are interested in temporomandibular,
people are interested in trauma, people that are interested in cancer.
I think the residency program is attractive for students
because of the diverse faculty and the scope of our practice.
We do, between the six faculty, cover the full spectrum of maxillofacial surgery.
In the immediate next five years, we have an endowment
to develop a translational research laboratory
and our increased use of information technology and computer planning
will steer us forward over the next 10 to 20 years
and enable us to take full advantage of any further developments in science that occur.
The future of the University of Maryland oral maxillofacial surgery is very bright.
We will continue to grow as a center of excellence, nationally and internationally.