How to Evaluate a Surgeon Before Undergoing Cosmetic Jaw Surgery

If you've decided that cosmetic jaw surgery is the best option for you in treating aesthetic and/or functional issues caused by misaligned or mismatched jaws, you'll have a lot of important decisions to make as you prepare for your procedure. Perhaps the most important of those in terms of getting optimal results is which Singapore oral and maxillofacial surgeon you choose to perform your surgery.

So how does the average person go about evaluating a surgeon before undergoing cosmetic jaw surgery? Of course, if you're near Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, you can just see Dr. S.L. Chan, since he's a leading Singapore oral and maxillofacial surgeon, but if not, you'll need to know the most important factors to look into to help you choose the best surgeon in your area.

Credentials, Education and Experience

First of all, you'll need to choose a surgeon with exceptional education, training and credentials. For instance, Dr. Chan holds a Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) from the National University of Singapore and a Master of Dental Surgery in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery from the University in Hong Kong, where he acquired advanced, hands-on training in surgical techniques and anesthesiology.

After earning those degrees, he became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons and a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore. Since then, Dr. Chan has earned a long list of professional memberships and accolades, and has held a number of prestigious teaching positions and prominent leadership roles in Singapore dentistry. To help ensure the optimal results from your cosmetic jaw surgery, choose a surgeon with comparable credentials.

As for experience, you'll want a surgeon who, like Dr. Chan, specializes in cosmetic jaw surgery in Singapore and has been performing these procedures for many years – since 1992 in Dr. Chan's case. Choosing a surgeon who has a long history with these intricate surgeries helps ensure a comfortable, complication-free procedure that yields excellent results.

Practice Environment

Before you decide upon a surgeon, take a good look around his or her offices to evaluate factors that can indicate the quality of care you'll receive from the practice. Of course, there are the obvious, but important, factors that everyone knows to look into, such as cleanliness and a polite and professional staff. Then there are the more subtle – and even more important – factors, such as whether the practice has invested in today's most advanced materials, techonlogy and equipment to ensure that the care patients are given is the very best available in terms of safety and precision.

Here again, we'll use Dr. Chan's office as an example of what you should be looking for as you evaluate a surgical practice. Dr. Chan's practice is equipped with state-of-the-art 3-D imaging technology – the Zenith CBCT from Vatech – that allows for a safe, comfortable and individualized scanning experience and delivers very clear and precise images, recording information down to 0.3mm. That precise imaging data is processed with Simplant OMS software, which generates a 3-D model of a patient's face. This model is used to show patients the aesthetic results they can expect from various surgical options – options that can be simulated in great detail with the software -- and once an option has been chosen, to aid in very precise surgical planning.

The bottom line is that you should not settle for less than the best when it comes to the surgeon and the practice you choose for your cosmetic jaw surgery. After all, these procedures are serious ones, and you'll be living with the results of yours for many years to come.