What Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons Learn in School

Added: 02/02/2006

As a child growing up in Brooklyn, some of my earliest hero's were oral and maxillofacial surgeons. Other kids idolized baseball stars, but not me. I recognized true talent when I saw it. What is the routine oral surgeons treatment provided for oral and maxillofacial patients? Those surgeons perform surgical procedures on mouth, jaws, head and neck. They also perform difficult tooth extractions, remove tumors and abnormal growths, correct anomalous jaws by maxillary or mandibular revision, prepare mouth for placing of dental prostheses, or heal fractured jaws.

Numerous specialties execute effective and safe facial surgery. But people, when seeking health care, are often confused. They normally believe that general dental care providers instead of certified oral surgeons treatment provided facelifts. They often believe oral and maxillofacial surgeons merely receive schooling in dental surgery. Such half-truths are caused by the fights among specialties in fear of rivalry rather than care for the patients? safety. There is no confirmation that any specialty has better results or less complication rates.

Having received initial dental education, oral and maxillofacial surgeons carry out a 4-to-6-year surgical internship in a hospital with certain rotations performed. Those rotations include:

- General surgery
- Medicine
- Medical ER
- Surgical ER
- Anesthesia
- Pathology

They also may include:

- Neurosurgery
- ENT
- Plastic surgery, etc.

Oral and maxillofacial surgeons always perform both medical and dental procedures. Also, certified oral and maxillofacial surgeons may have privileges at local hospitals that include physical, history, ICU admission privileges, etc.

These days, 50% of oral and maxillofacial surgeons finishing their internships will have both dental and medical degrees. I am a promoter of that dual degree system, but there are so many perfectly trained oral and maxillofacial surgeons without medical degrees.

So far, 16 states in the U.S. have successfully modernized their dental practice statutes to reflect the current oral and maxillofacial surgery scope. Competitive pessimists can darken the issue, but when the patients and the lawmakers elected to stand for them inspect the issue, success has followed the dual-degree specialty more often than it hasn't.

In many states, any specialist with a medical license and a medical doctor degree has the legal right to perform facial surgery. According to this logic, any psychiatrist or pediatrician could perform a facelift legally, but a certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon with 4-to-6 years of surgical training in a hospital doesn't have the right to perform those procedures- I think you can smell something really wrong in this out-of-date legislation.

A good old rule for all of us, both patients and health care providers, is not to hurry with judgment on the qualifications of a medical specialty until you fully understand what they do and how they train.

The Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons education also includes broad training in the following disciplines:

- Reconstruction of face,

- Orthographic surgery,

- Maxillofacial trauma,

- Preprosthetic surgery,

- Maxillofacial aesthetic surgery,

- Temporomandibular joint surgery,

- Exodontias,

- Craniofacial surgery and some other surgical specialties.

Tremendously busy out-patient and in-patient services are kept up in every hospital. These programs are intended to make trainees acquainted thoroughly in the clinical administration patients for maxillofacial and oral surgery.

And now you know why I respect these individuals so much!

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