If you feel pain in your jaw, what kind of specialist should you see? Most people would turn to either an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist or a head and neck surgeon. But the person you should really be seeing is an oral and maxillofacial specialist.
Specialists in the field - OMF for short - say that public awareness of the dental discipline is so low that patients suffer unnecessary delay in treatment. Despite the abundance of healthcare information in the media and online, public understanding of this medical speciality still remains scant.
'[Those with oral and jaw ailments] often come to us after numerous referrals, which waste time and money,' says James Chow Kwok-fai, president of the Hong Kong Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.
Chow says OMF is the only speciality that treats disorders of the temporomandibular joint, the small joint located in front of the ear where the skull and lower jaw meet.
'When patients feel pain in the joint, they will go to ear, nose and throat doctor as they feel pain in front of the ear,' he says. 'The ear, nose and throat doctor will transfer him to an orthopaedic doctor who will refer the patient to us. [Most of our patients come to us] through referrals.'
The poor public understanding of the speciality was revealed recently in a survey conducted by OMF specialist Alfred Lau Sze-lok. In June last year, 104 people aged 18 years or above were interviewed on how much they know about the field. Three out of four of the respondents said they had never heard of the speciality. For those who had heard of the discipline, they wrongly subsumed general dentistry, dental cleaning and orthodontics into OMF surgery.
Lau says OMF surgery involves oral and jaw surgeries. 'We do all surgeries inside the month such as the removal of wisdom teeth and tongue tumours. Cosmetic surgeries include shortening protruding chins and mandible (lower jaw) reductions, to make the face slimmer. We also treat patients born with congenital deformities like cleft lips and asymmetrical faces.'