Most medical problems have at least two possible solutions; surgical and non-surgical. Given that most people do not like to be cut, non-surgical options are by far the preferred option for most patients. For example, if you have some clogged-up arteries in your heart, do you go to a cardiologist or a heart surgeon. From what I understand from my heart surgeon friends, the first stop tend to be cardiologists these days. This is understandable as cutting open your chest to do a by-pass graft scares the living daylights out of most people. Compare this to someone inserting a wire from you thigh up to the heart to unblock the artery. Jaw deformities like an underbite or overbite, within certain limits, can be moderated with non-surgical treatment like orthodontics. But the key is knowing the limitations.
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Twenty-four years ago, when I was preparing my Master’s thesis, I reviewed a lot of literature on facial norms. I needed to look at what constitute a “normal” face. As it turned out, most of the publications were actually based on aesthetic ideals. Naturally, this is because surgical literature are biased towards surgically enhancing facial proportions and features to achieve an aesthetic outcome. Somehow, “normal” is not what patients who are ready to subject themselves under the knife wanted. In Singapore, we are subjected to chiseled angular facial features of the West and the V-shape face so desired in Asia.
A 19 year old male Chinese patient was referred by his orthodontist for surgical correction of underbite deformity. It is commonly believed by most patients looking for underbite corrective surgery that their problem lies with the lower jaw being too long. However, it is rarely a problem of just the lower jaw. In most cases, it is also a case of the upper jaw being underdeveloped.
Given the many advances in aesthetic medicine over recent years, cosmetic procedures in Singapore are becoming more popular than ever before, allowing people to