Metal Mouth Message Board

Hello, I'm new here. I fractured my lower jaw in three places, three months ago. I had two plates put in on the central fracture. Three months on the upper plate, just below my lower front teeth, is so irritating me. It makes my chin stiff (inside) and as an English teacher in France. I can no longer pronounce certain sounds. My physio says it's tight muscles and jaw (liquid diet six weeks and barely opened my mouth.) Did anyone else have these issues? Did they go away? Should I have plate removal? I have five months before my surgeon will consider it. I'm now on sick leave (first time in my life) as talking to students is too difficult. I don't know what to do, just discovered this site. Thanks.

Welcome to the board! Things have been a bit quiet around here lately, but you may want to check out the board here "Oral (orthogenic) Surgery," which is another subforum under "Braces Treatment Discussion." There, I did a cursory search on "metal + plate" and found these results (and you can search further within these results): search.php?keywords=metal+plate&fid%5B0%5D=15 . All the boards have a search function near the top left, and it works fairly well. Sorry I could not be of more help, but best of luck to you!

Sorry to hear you are having problems. I don't have any direct experience with mandible fractures thankfully. The plates can be removed but I think the surgery required to do this is similar in scope to the placement surgery and thus are usually left in place. I have seen where the plate becomes exposed to the oral cavity. Not real common but it does happen. When that occurs it tends to become an infected mess and the plate needs to be removed. I would not expect that to occur but if you really want the plate removed once it is no longer needed discuss this with your Oral Surgeon.