Zach is a high school athlete. His lower jaw “mandible“ got dislocated and stuck open while in school. His grandfather got to the school first and took him to urgent care near our office. The physician called our office to ask if we can help this young man or if she should refer him to an Emergency room.
Since it is a lot simpler for a trained TMJ dentist’ to put the jaw back into place than being sedated at an ER, we saw Zach right away. The video shows his presentation with the jaw stuck in an open lock condition.
It is quite painful due to the stretched ligaments, especially the longer the jaw stays dislocated from the socket and stays stuck in the open position. The muscles near the jaw joint also go into painful spasm.
Zach had several open locks in 2 years with them occurring more easily and more frequently. It is relatively quick and painless to the patient for a trained TMD dentist to put the jaw back into the socket. The still images with teeth together are within 2 minutes of the video. The grandfather was still giving directions to the dad when the dislocation was reduced much to the surprise and relief of Zach. He reported that this is the quickest and easiest reduction he had done.
Another case history where the jaw alignment problem that is the underlying cause of these open locks was corrected may be found here. While Natalie’s primary concern was migraines, she often had open locks that ended up in ER visits.
Once the jaw alignment was corrected, not only her migraines were gone, the jaw never dislocated either.
