Additional Training in Orthognathic Surgery

[fakeplastictrees]

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I'm a resident in plastic surgery and have a strong interest in Craniofacial surgery. I also really enjoy Orthognathic surgery and wonder what the avenues would be for a plastic surgeon to get additional post residency training in Orthognathic surgery. I've seen examples of this (e.g., http://deschamps-braly.com/about/), so I'm hoping to get some perspectives on avenues that might be available for plastic surgeons.

 

[PlasticSurgMD]

Become a resident member of the ASMS (http://www.maxface.org), go to a couple meetings or their maxface course/conference, get to know the PRS guys doing orthagnathic surgery all over the US, and do a month or two with them your chief year or right after training. Seems to be a good option if you don't want to sign on for a year of Craniofacial and want focused orthagnathic exposure.

 

[deleted144060]

Dr. Deschamps-Braly did quite a bit of training post craniofacial fellowship. He went to Europe and worked with Obwegeser and Marchac. There are some craniofacial fellowships in the US that have an orthognathic component (USC for one). If you want to do craniofacial, you might start looking at programs where there is an OMFS presence. Alternatively, you could do what I did. After my fellowship, there was a community need for orthognathics for medicaid patients. I managed to get the local oral surgeons to do cases with me and teach me. What I didn't realize is all the support stuff needed for something like this. I eventually got the hospital to by a cone beam CT with Dolphin software. I used KLS for virtual planning and splints. It turned out to be such a production that I hired another craniofacial surgeon who actually had orthognathic experience.

 

[The Anhedonia]

The Craniofacial fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital is a 1 year fellowship with great orthognathic exposure as the plastics and omfs department are together (Mulliken - plastics and Padwa - OMFS). The plastics fellow works extensive with the OMFS chief to do the pre-op workup (models, splints, dolphin, etc) and they cut the cases together. The patient pool largely 'belongs' to the OMFS faculty as they get referred from outside orthodontists for surgical correction, but there is a decent # of craniofacial patients (hemifacial, clefts, etc) who are both plastics/OMFS.

 

[fakeplastictrees]

Thanks @PlasticSurgMD @Moravian @The Anhedonia for your responses and information! I searched several times and couldn't find any fellowships, so it's great to know that some craniofacial fellowships in the US do have orthognathic components. If anyone knows of other craniofacial fellowships with decent orthognathic exposure I'd appreciate it the info!

 

[totipocincy]

The best way to find this out is to talk to people at or from the institutions you're interested in. The ASMS is a great way to go. Another good way to find which craniofacial fellowships have good orthognathic experience is to determine whether they have strong linked craniofacial orthodontic programs. In house orthodontists means built in opportunities to participate in modeling, VSP etc. I'm training at NYU and have been very happy with the volume and mix of peds/adult and cleft/cosmetic/trauma-related orthognathic cases.

 

[droliver]

Unless you're considering a near 100% peds practice, its extraordinarily unlikely you'll be doing orthognathic surgery in practice. That's almost exclusively a dental/OMFS domain in community practice, particularly since cosmetic genioplasty (notbusing an implant) went the way of the dodo.