Well, this is an interesting question. The most memorable case of dental trauma that I’ve seen in my career involves a patient who was a victim of domestic violence. This lady was severely beaten up by her then-husband, who used a baseball bat at home and swung it at her face when they got into a huge fight.
The ex-husband actually carried her and threw her off the balcony of their condominium. So she plummeted three storeys down but she survived. She did not die. She fell down three storeys, was thrown off the balcony, so it was, of course, a police case. I had to give a statement as well to the police, the investigating officer. And I think the ex-husband should be in jail by now.
She sustained heavy injuries all over her body and to her face and teeth. By the time she came to me, she had already gone through multiple surgeries to fix her broken ribs and her broken bones and major issues. So now it’s down to fixing her teeth. She could not face the world because her teeth were all broken and she couldn’t smile, and she was in pain constantly. So she gave me a picture of herself before the incident, she showed me a picture of herself smiling. I sat down with her and I told her that we could really try to reconstruct her teeth to make her look like what she did before.
So with smile design, implants, crowns and veneers, we managed to completely reconstruct her smile. So she looked very close, almost the same as what she did before and it was such a touching moment. She was very grateful and she burst out in tears.
It was quite an emotional moment for me and I would never forget that a person’s sense of self-worth is so attached to their teeth and to their smile. So dental trauma is a topic that I’m really passionate about.
Any kind of patient who has suffered an injury or traumatic injury to the mouth or to the teeth, we are really privileged as dentists to be able to help. To reconstruct the teeth not just to be able to move, for the patient to bite, but so that they can have that sense of self-worth and confidence to smile, to go into social settings. To not be embarrassed to be in a social setting and be recluse and hiding at home.
