After 20 years, youth starts to chew again

Indore: In a complex surgery, city doctors have operated on jaw of a 25-year-old patient, who could not eat or chew from last 20 years due to temporomandibular joint (TMJ) ankylosis disease in which jaws get locked.
Living on liquid and semisolid food for years, resident of Borgaon village in Khandwa district, Monu Mohite got a new leash of life after surgeons took a challenge to perform surgery.
"It was challenging to give anesthesia and oxygen as both mouth and nose routes were inaccessible and the neck was at a sloping angle to the face. We had to first practice on 3D model of patient's face and jaw, which was customised for doing complicated surgery," said the treating surgeon Dr. Sushmitha Rajmohan. The other doctors, who accompanied her, were Dr Anuj Vyas and Dr Smita Bagulkar.
Mohite had sustained severe injury after falling from a height when he was five-year-old. After the incident his jaws got locked, which in medical terminology is called TMJ ankylosis.
"This is probably for the first time in city that three-dimensional technology, which is a recent innovation in face and jaws surgery, has been put to use to reduce the surgical time and improve outcomes in rare and complicated cases. Simulation before actual operation was just like the pilots do before flying airplanes," said Dr Rajmohan.
The condition named TMJ ankylosis is seen among children whose jaw injuries go untreated and leads to partial or complete inability to open mouth due to fusion of lower jaw bone to skull gradually.
Mohite's case, however, was rare as he had other complications such deformed spine and chest (kyphoscoliosis), a small heart, poor lung capacity, malnourished body due to lack of proper diet and low level of haemoglobin. Eating or swallowing was a difficult task for him and body was reactive to most of the drugs.