AIIMS starts patient-specific jaw joint replacement

While jaw joint is the most complex and maximally used joint in the human body, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has started to perform patient-specific artificial jaw-joint replacement for those who have fused jaw joint due to trauma, infection or any systemic disease.

For this, surgeons at the medical institute are making patient-specific jaw joints after doing CT scan of the patients and printing its replica through 3D technologies.

During the procedure, defective joint bone is removed and a jaw joint is placed with a minimal incision under general anesthesia.

Dr. Ajoy Roy Choudhury, HOD of oral maxillofacial surgery at AIIMS informed ANI: "So far, AIIMS has given relief to at least 100 patients through jaw joint replacement surgery. There are various conditions by which jaw-joints gets deformed or diseased. Due to this, the patient is not able to open their mouth. This causes malnutrition as he is not able to eat anything and not able to have social interactions. These jaw-joints deformity are very painful."

Previously, what used to happen that surgeons used to cut off the jaw-joints and leave it like that. This created gap giving uneasiness to the patient.

"AIIMS is the only government centre in India which is providing 3D technology-enabled patient-specific jaw joint replacement. It gets absolute fit, minimal native bone alteration required; the lesser time needed and reduces the jaw joint pain. For economically weaker section patients are getting it done through Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi (RAN)."

"We are doing patient-specific jaw joint replacement because stock jaw joint's availability is limited. And every patient's native bone anatomy variability makes its use very limited. As this procedure is highly expensive, we are in talks with IIT to get these jaw joint implants built. Presently, only one company is providing jaw joints in India," said Dr Roy Choudhury.