The field of oral and maxillofacial surgery has a broad scope, and specialists in this field provide a wide array of services to patients with problems that range from dental infections to head and neck malignancies.
Oral and maxillofacial surgeons remove impacted teeth, place implants, perform procedures to correct cleft and other dentofacial deformities, fix hard and soft tissue injuries to the face and jaws, and manage complex oral and facial pathology, including reconstruction of the resulting deformity, among many other services.
Oral and maxillofacial surgeons regularly partner with general dentists to help provide specialty care for their patients.
There are oral surgical procedures that are part of the broad scope of general dentistry.
These include routine oral surgery such as the extraction of teeth, suturing wounds, and biopsying suspicious soft tissue lesions.
Oral and maxillofacial surgery textbooks provide didactic guidance to help dental students learn these skills.
However, it is cumbersome to bring textbooks into dental school preclinical learning suites or actual clinical settings, and even more difficult for students who receive their textbooks electronically.
Focused guides are better suited for serving as a laboratory or clinical resource when learning and mastering surgical skills.
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This is why this guide was developed.
Suturing a wound is fun and satisfying to perform.
However, learning the various suturing techniques can be a trying experience. Suturing in the mouth further complicates the situation.
Section II attempts to unravel the mystery of placing and tying sutures. The key instruments and materials used for intraoral suturing are presented.
A detailed description and heavily illustrated guide to suturing follows.
Section III addresses the topic of diagnostic pathology, providing a well-reasoned approach to describing and differentiating oral lesions.
A discussion of various biopsy techniques is then given to help the student be able to surgically sample oral soft tissue, when indicated, and then submit the sample for examination by an oral and maxillofacial pathologist.
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Section IV provides guidance on prescription writing. A succinct discussion follows of analgesics and antibiotics commonly used for the oral surgery patient.
Just as with any of the skills needed to become a well-trained general dentist, learning under the close guidance of expert faculty is required.
This manual is intended to complement faculty instruction. Also, just as with many of the surgical skills dentists acquire, there is an aspect of art in their performance.
Therefore, individual faculty might share or prefer variations on the concepts presented in the following pages.
