LATE TREATMENT OF MALUNITED MAXILLARY FRACTURE

부정유합된 상악골 골절의 처치

Unfavorable healing of maxillary fractures may impose functional and esthetic burdens upon the trauma victim. Malunited maxillary fractures are generally a result of treatment delay, incomplete or inaccurate immobilization of the fracture fragments, or infection. Dysfunctions of mastication, distortions in speech, gross defects in facial contour, and related psychic changes are problems which may require secondary correction. When it is necessary to delay definitive treatment or when inadequate maxillary fracture reduction is recognized within the first week following injury, the maxilla can be mobilized by heavy handed dental manipulation under anesthesia or by elastic traction to an external fixation appliance attached to the maxilla by arch bars or an acrylic splint. But malunited maxillary fracture that have progressed to bony malunion require osteotomy procedure in order to establish normal anatomic relationships. This report parents two cases of malunited unilateral maxillary fracture surgically corrected by unilateral Le Fort I osteotomy.