Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Maxillofacial Shadowing

These past few weeks I have begun shadowing an Oral Maxillofacial surgeon. And it has been nothing short of amazing. The first time I went I was able to watch 2 surgeries. One being a removal of dentures. Now, this is sort of funny. The gentlemen who had these dentures never really took out the dentures. Here is the problem...they were removable. So in the process of a few years of never removing his dentures, his teeth progressively become rotted...yum. Well usually in the case of removable dentures, you shave the teeth down to the gum line. So in that case, the person still needs to remove the dentures and brush their teeth. So with never removing the dentures, excess tissue developed around the gum line, which made it difficult to remove the dentures.

Another surgery i saw that was really awesome was a closure of the soft palate on an 8 month child. In this surgery, I was able to actually scrub in and hold some instruments and secure the babies head. Who knew that they would trust me, but they did, and everything went well. I really do not want to talk a lot about the procedure because i will be writing about in my 485. But essentially what they did was separate the muscle on the soft palate and close to opening. It was a very interesting procedure, and the doctor i shadowed explained it very well! Im excited to see the upcoming surgeries that are planned!

But what also is very exciting is that I am going to Paris along with Vincent and Katie for easter. It should be a blast.

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