South African Dental Association Gauteng South Branch

Maxillo-Facial and Oral Surgery is an exciting specialist branch of dentistry which deals with assisting patients to resolve problems of a surgical nature.

This speciality encompases many different aspects, namely:

• Congenital and developmental problems like replacing missing teeth that never formed, removing impacted wisdom teeth and sometimes canine teeth, correcting jaw mal-alignment and assisting specialist Orthodontists to correct dental and dento-skeletal abnormalities.
• The treatment of infective conditions like dental absceses and infected cysts in the jaws which can often be extremely dangerous.
• Sometimes cancers are present in the oral cavity and biopsies are needed with further management of these conditions being required.
• Implantology is a large part of Maxillo-Facial and Oral Surgery and our patients benefit greatly from dental implants which allow them to regain normal function and esthetics once natural teeth have been lost.
• Trauma is most unfortunate and thankfully we are able in Maxillo-Facial and Oral Surgery to assist our patients to recover from these events and to regain normal or near normal function and esthetics.

This surgical discipline is most rewarding in that we are often able to offer our patients may options to assist with problems that are often distressing and debilitating. In this way we are often able to enrich the lives of the people that come to us for assistance.