Department of Oral Maxillofacial

This department is divided into several units:

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Unit

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery is the surgical specialty that includes the diagnosis, surgical and related treatments of a wide spectrum of diseases, injuries, defects and aesthetics aspects of the mouth, teeth, jaws, face, head and neck. It is an internationally recognized surgical specialty. Examples of these include oral manifestation of systemic diseases, orofacial infections, facial pain, dental anomalies, traumatic injuries of the face, oral malignancies, facial skeletal discrepancies, congenital facial deformities such as cleft lip & palate, and oral reconstruction for surgically related problem.
This unit also offered multiple specialty clinics as the following:

1. Trauma Clinic
2. Oral Cancer Clinic
3. Tumour Clinic
4. Osteonecrosis Clinic
5. Implant Clinic
6. Orthognathic Surgery Combined Clinic
7. Craniofacial Combined Clinic
8. Cleft Combined Clinic
9. TMD Combined Clinic

Paediatric Dentistry Unit

Paediatric dentistry is an age-defined specialty (below 16 years old) that provides both primary and comprehensive preventive and therapeutic oral health care for infants and children through adolescence, including those with special needs.

These procedures include promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative. The department caters specifically for all referred cases, either as in-patients or out-patients.  Children and adolescents with special needs are the priority groups, and they include those with:

• medical problems, such as, congenital heart diseases, blood dyscrasias, oncology and transplant patients, and patients with chronic diseases like asthma and renal disease, as well as children who are immuno-compromised.
• learning disability, such as, Down Syndrome, ADHD etc.
• physical disability, such as, children with cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities, including visual, hearing and speech impairments.
• congenital or acquired malformations of the orofacial region, i.e., cleft lip and palate and craniofacial disorders.
• adverse dental behaviour and attitudes towards dental treatments.
• severe early childhood caries or rampant caries
• dental anomalies such as amelogenesis imperfecta, dentinogenesis imperfecta, hypodontia, supernumeraries etc.

Besides routine dental treatments, services offered also include dento-alveolar, surgery, interceptive orthodontics, management of oro-facial injuries, endodontic treatment of primary and permanent teeth, management of oral pathology and the provision of oral and maxillofacial prosthesis.

Elective and emergency cases requiring general anaesthesia are treated in the operating theatre. Emergency cases outside of office hours are attended to by postgraduates and specialists on-call at the UMMC Emergency Department and Faculty of Dentistry.

Special Care Dentistry (SCD) Unit

SCD refers to the oral health management of patients adversely affected orally by intellectual, physical, medical or psychiatric issues or, more often, a combination of a number of these factors where such  conditions necessitate a modified delivery of oral healthcare for the patient’s total health and well-being. In SCD, we provide dental treatment for special needs patients who have problems getting dental treatment at community dental clinics due to their medical conditions or disabilities. Priority will be given to the UMMC in-patient aged 16 year old and above with complex medical problems, having multiple comorbidities,or those who may require urgent dental care.

Oral Medicine and Oral Pathology Unit

Oral Medicine is concerned with the investigation, diagnosis and nonsurgical management of diseases affecting the oral and maxillofacial region. Oral diseases have a wide range of clinical presentations and can manifest either as a local oral disease or a medical disorder with oral, jaws and salivary glands involvement or as a sign of an underlying systemic condition. The division of Oral Pathology deals with the microscopic diagnosis of oral diseases. Specimens from the dental clinics in the faculty and from outside are accepted for microscopic interpretation.

Oral and Maxillofacial Imaging Unit

Oral and maxillofacial radiology is the specialty of dentistry and discipline of radiology concerned with the production and interpretation of radiographic images. Intraoral and extraoral radiographs including CBCT are used to provide diagnostic information for the treatment plan and management of disorders, diseases, and conditions affecting the mouth, face and jaws.

Forensic Dentistry Unit

Forensic dentistry is a specialty of dentistry that deals with dental evidence in the interest of justice. The scope encompasses the recognition, proper handling, examination, documentation, preservation, interpretation and analysis of dental and oro-facial evidence. The findings and opinions from a comprehensive evaluation pertaining to the evidence might be presented to the Court of Law. The core work of forensic dentistry is establishing an identity of an unknown body through dental comparative analysis. This method of identification is also the primarily used in disaster victim identification. Another work component of this specialty is to provide opinion relating to age estimation, facial comparison, hard and soft tissues injuries, and bitemark analysis.

COVID-19 Serology Testing for Healthcare workers in UMMC was conducted for the departments’ staff on the 25th February 2021.