Ludhiana, October 27
A city dental surgeon has claimed to perform a rare surgery on fractured lower jaw bone of a patient without giving an incision outside the jaw.
Dr Vikram Prabhakar, Associate Professor, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, B.J.S. Dental College and Hospital, here claimed at a press conference today that he had joined the lower jaw bone using titanium plates without giving an incision outside the jaw.
According to the surgeon, the patient did not want any scar on her cheeks. He tried to fix the plates without making a cut and pushed the plates through a cut given from within.
He said she would be discharged after 24 hours of the operation. The patient who did not want to be identified said she was feeling comfortable after the surgery and would be discharged in the evening only.
The doctor advised her to go back to work as she would be able to talk and eat anything.
The patient had fallen from a scooter some 15 days ago. She was taken to the Christian Medical College and Hospital. She said doctors attending to her thought earlier that she a head injury but there was no such problem as indicated by various tests.
After she was discharged from there she kept complaining of pain in the lower jaw. Then she was brought to another dental surgeon who diagnosed that she had developed a fracture in the jaw bone. He fixed the bone with a wiring, a usual procedure to cure fractures and recommended her to keep it fixed for six weeks.
But the girl kept complaining of the constant pain. She was brought to Dr Prabhakar who recommended a surgery. ‘‘Despite the wiring, the visible gap between the broken bones was too much. So I decided to treat the fracture surgically.
But the girl did not want a scar on her face. So we decided to do it with a new technique — Trans-Buccal Approach , which is nowhere practised in the Northern region. This key-hole type of surgery allows the doctor to perform drill and screw driving operations successfully through a small hole. The surgery was performed in three hours,’’ said Dr Prabhakar.
