By Alexander Germanis
In 2010, after exhaustive effort, the restoration project of the world famous Parthenon in Athens, Greece finally concluded. Combining the latest scientific knowhow with the building techniques of ancient Greece, architects, masons and historians labored for 27 years to reassemble the 70,000 block architectural masterpiece and restore it to its proper state.
Those involved needed to know not only how the Parthenon was built in the first place, but how it was meant to look when completed; and they needed to figure out in what order to reassemble it.
That same combination of knowhow, technique, and scientific advancement is put into practice by maxillofacial surgeons like Drs. Steve Doran, D.M.D. and Thomas Ocheltree Jr., D.M.D., whenever they encounter a case of facial trauma.
“Cutting [his] teeth on trauma and facial injuries,” Dr. Doran of Doran, Capodice, Efaw and Ocheltree, LLC in Bloomington has decades of experience reconstructing the complex three-dimensional architectural puzzle of the human face. And like with many 3D puzzles, there is a specific order that works best.
“The way you reconstruct a facial trauma is you start from the inside and you go out. And you start from the bottom and go up,” he explains. “A high percentage of the time you start putting the puzzle back together with the teeth. Being dentists, we have a good feel for the way people’s teeth are supposed to come together—how their bite fits appropriately.”
“Especially in a rather severe injury,” he continues, “it’s kind of hard to know where to start sometimes, so putting the teeth together is always a great place. Because if the teeth fit together then you know how to put the lower jaw together. Once you’ve got the lower jaw put together you can fit the lower jaw to the upper jaw and you can just keep going up from there to put everything back together.”
Nevertheless, “every injury is different,” Dr. Ocheltree adds. “You want to restore function first: to be able to eat and see.” Once function is restored, “we have the ability to actually take the cosmetics strongly into consideration.”
Achieving a restoration of function and aesthetics was, until fairly recently, something doctors sought for but could not always reach. As Dr. Doran says, “When I first started…we didn’t have bone plates, bone plating systems and screws to put people’s faces back together. We borrowed things from the orthopedic surgeons who were doing hand surgery and that sort of thing. Most of it was put together with wire and hope. But the technology has improved to where things that you couldn’t even hope to reconstruct before are done pretty routinely now.”
“And it’s not just a matter of putting the bones together,” Dr. Ocheltree continues. “We’re talking about the soft tissue: the tissue around your eye or your lip or your nose. We can get that all back there very nicely with the technology that’s available now.”
“The treatment of facial trauma has changed drastically over the thirty years I’ve been in practice,” Dr. Doran explains. “The improvements in x-ray and radiology help us diagnose where things are supposed to go when we’re done. You can actually do three-dimensional reconstructions of a fractured jaw or a fractured face and know where the pieces are supposed to go before you even start the surgery, which is phenomenal.”
And the advancements in the field continue to evolve. Doctor Ocheltree outlines: “The technology is moving forward to the place where the hardware and the bone plates used to reposition people’s fractured facial bones will actually be pre-shaped to be placed at the time of surgery. There will be a time when we’ll be able to take your own skin or maybe your own stem cells and grow them in a culture medium outside your body; and in three days you’ll be able to get your own skin back in an area where you’ve lost it. That’s on the forefront.”
As the doctors illustrate, restoring architectural masterpieces is not limited to the dusty hills of Greece. “We’re certainly much more able to positively reconstruct the bony structures, especially the things you need to build the architecture, and get the face back where it was. We can really put you back where you were.”
Drs. Doran, Capodice, Efaw and Ocheltree provide a full scope of oral and maxillofacial surgery with expertise ranging from wisdom tooth removal and dental implants to bone grafting procedures and corrective jaw surgery. They can also perform facial cosmetic surgery. Their office is located at 109 N. Regency Dr. in Bloomington with satellite offices in Watseka and Lincoln. For more information, you may call 309-663-2526 or visit them online at www.dceooms.com.