What the Heck! Oral MaxilloFacial Surgery Nerd Words

A single medical word can hide a whole anatomy lesson, and it gets even better when someone tries to guess the definition first. We play a fast, funny round of What The Heck? with comedian Drew Davis and Dr. Steve, turning intimidating oral and maxillofacial surgery vocabulary into plain-English takeaways you can actually remember.

We dig into cleft lip repair and why it’s done early, not just for appearance, but for nursing, speech development, and restoring healthy function. From there we get into LeFort fractures and the LeFort osteotomy, translating what “midface classification” really means when trauma hits, and how controlled surgical cuts can reposition the jaw to correct a dental facial deformity and improve bite alignment.

Then we break down sagittal split osteotomy for the lower jaw and the surprisingly intuitive goal behind it: moving the dentition segment so teeth meet the way they’re supposed to. We also cover distraction osteogenesis, the slow, deliberate process of growing new bone, often used for pediatric patients with tiny jaws that can’t support the airway. To wrap it up, we explain the sphenozygomatic suture, not stitches, but a bone junction that helps surgeons confirm the cheekbone sits in the right place during facial reconstruction.

If you like learning through stories, quick laughs, and real clinical insight, subscribe, share this with a friend who loves weird science, and leave a review. Which term should we decode next?

This episode was produced by Angie Debelak with post-production editing by Ben Hill Sound.

Thanks for listening to Dr Ben and Friends.  Laughter is the best medicine...unless you're treating bowel or bladder incontinence.  See you next time!

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Transcript

Welcome And The Word Game Setup

Speaker 0:05

Dr. Ben and Friends. Knock knock howdy, folks. Dr. Ben here. Thanks for tuning in to the Dr. Ben and Friends podcast. All right, our next segment is What the Heck? WTH Whiskey Tango Hotel, where our guest comic, Dr. Drew. Hello. Steve Doctor, love it. Is going to read, pronounce, and explain what uh certain medical terms are that Dr. Steve hello oral maxillofacial surgeon uses every day. And so kind of like that game Balder Dash, if you guys ever played that? where you see a word, an uncommon word, and you try to make up a definition for that. Let's do it. I'm sure I know every single word and definition. We'll start easy. Okay, Dr. Steve, show them your first word, Dr. Steve.

Cleft Lip Repair Explained

Speaker 1:04

Oh my gosh. Uh these are English words, right? Okay, English language. Okay, so this looks like uh oh, a cleft lip repair. Uh so that's what the word clearly says cleft lip repair. Okay. Um, and it means when you have a cleft lip and you need to repair it, but it's not how you think it is. It's not with your actual lip. It's actually when the front of your car is damaged and you have to take it in to get it fixed. I like it. A trick one. I knew you were gonna try to stump me. I was like, nope, I'm not falling for it. I think you were closer with the first part of your answer. And Dr. Steve can tell us about cleft rip repair is um unfortunately when roughly about one in 700 children throughout the world are born, may exhibit some type of cleft lip or palate repair. The lip repair is actually done at a very young age so the child can actually nurse and learn how to speak. But yes, it's it's basic repair of the lip, re readjusting the lips and the musculature to become functional and aesthetic again. Wow. And there's like a hard and a soft palate, isn't there? Yes, there is. Okay. Huh. Just interesting. Fun fact. I'm just a bone doctor. I don't know too much about so this one, this one's a bone thing. Okay, next.

LeFort Osteotomy And Facial Fractures

Speaker 2:25

Oh, okay. Uh Lee Leafort osteotomy. Tommy. Good. Osteo Tom Tom Tommy. Leafort. My question is, what the heck is that? Right. Uh well, it's actually this is another trick one because you we I was assuming it was medical terms, but Leafort osteootonomy was a general in the Confederate side of the Civil War. And uh sponsored by the French. Absolutely. Le fort. So is a version of astrology where you instead of thinking about the stars, you're thinking about the bones, and like, what are you? Are are you a meniscus? Well then that means you have a personality. I don't know. Uh-huh. Um but I Lee Fort osteotonomy. Uh I have no idea what a Lee Fort is. Sounds like something a tree nymph would have. So you're actually closer with your Civil War reference because Le Fort osteotomy also goes along. There's a Le Fort fracture, but all these came from a French surgeon, Renee Le Fort, Le Fort, okay, who developed um a classification system initially for looking at traumatic injuries of the midfacial region. And there's three types of Le Fort. Okay. There's one that is just a horizontal fracture across your palate, type of deal. There's a that's a Le Fort 1 and a Le Fort 2 is where you actually have a pyramidal fracture that incorporates your upper jaw and your nose. And then a Le Fort 3 incorporates the whole mid phase. So your upper jaw, your nasal, your cheekbones, the bottom of your orbits, all as one big fracture segment. The cool thing with it is the way he developed these classifications is he took a bunch of skulls and then threw them down these concrete stairs. Whoa. And looked at their fracture patterns. And looked at the fracture patterns and realized that there were three major fracture patterns. Someone had to start somewhere, right? Um, so the Le Fort osteotomy is actually a procedure where you electively cut the jaw in that horizontal pattern for kids and adults that have a dental facial deformity, like where their bites don't occur. They have their mid-faces behind. So the Le Fort osteotomy is actually where you make that cut and bring the lower jaw usually forward to reposition it in a different place to help the person's bite. That's actually really interesting. I can't wait for someone to ask me today, like, what do you know any medical French medical terms? French are French doctors in the medical field. I'm gonna sound so smart. I think he was uh saying that if we don't come up with the classification system, heads will roll. Yeah, yeah, they did. With a little help. All right. Next one. Let's do it in the same uh the same mode.

Sagittal Split Osteotomy For The Jaw

Speaker 5:29

Okay, um sagittal split osteotonomy. Osteotomy. Osteotomy. Osteotomy. A sagittal split sounds disgusting. That sounds like not something I I would be able to talk about on a clean comedy show. Yeah, we are clean. So um, or or or it's but I've actually that was my first thought. My second thought, I figured it out. Um a sagittal split is when some part of your face, like for example, your chin or something, starts sagging. And a lot of people and it can that can create some problems medically, like are you gonna with the you know, or any, it could be your ear, it could be your you know, cheek or whatever. It could be any that's sagging. Yeah, and so obviously the doctors have to perform the sagittal split surgery to get things back in order. So does it have anything to do with astrology and Sagittarius? No, okay, no, and my high school had a planetarium, and I never knew these in high school or planetarium. The guy who ran our planetarium, that's how you pronounced it planetarium. So a sagittal split osteotomy goes along with the Le Fort osteotomy. The sagittal split osteotomy is actually the procedure that's done on the lower jaw, the mandible, to cut that in a sagittal manner, which means like front to back, and then you cut it and it can slide the tooth part, the dentition part of the teeth to help line the teeth up on kids on people that need to have dental facial deformity corrections. Huh. Well, I I Sagittal. I wasn't super close to that one. Not far off though. With a sagging chin. Yeah, I did I did reference the chin. We're bone doctors, you have to keep it simple. Okay. Okay.

Distraction Osteogenesis And Bone Growth

Speaker 7:17

You might get this one. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know many of these. Distraction osteogenesis. Did I say distraction or distraction? No, it's distraction. Um I can hold it that way for me. You know, at this point it looks about the same upside down or right side up. Um, well, um distraction's probably the osteogenesis is clearly the birth of bones. Okay. So in the beginning. In the beginning, there was bone. So and dis distraction sounds so close to distraction. This is when if maybe your patient is like a ninja or like a warrior, like, and they need you need to give them fake bones so that in battle someone might try to like break their arm, but oh no, they broke the fake arm or whatever. And then you can sneak it down. Or you may be trying to confuse the osteogenesis. Yeah, absolutely. We're trying to distract the osteogenesis from occurring. Yes. Like, don't look over here. Don't look over here. It's like a magic trick. Right. Smoke and mirrors. So distraction osteogenesis is something that mainly occurs in um pediatric patients that are born with very tiny jaws that can't support their airway. So, what you do in distraction osteogenesis is you go and you make a cut in the bone, and then you put this external fixator, which has like pins that come out of your face, type of deal, or a thing that comes along, and it's got a little lock and key, and it's got a little thing that you twist like a turn a day or a quarter turn a day, and you slowly move the jaw out, you know, maybe a quarter millimeter of the day to actually bring it out where it's supposed to be. And then once it's held into place, you then hold it there until all the bone consolidates. So you stretch the periosteum over top of the bone, and you're sort of distracting the bone cells, and they actually lay down and grow new bone. Huh. We can do leg lengthening procedures for both. Oh, that's really cool. We can make you taller. I thank you. Could you make me thinner? Was there like a is there a the opposite? Like that's the rack. They just stretch. So that's why I thought you would get that. This one, this is a answer to a classic question that oral max facial surgeons get like on their boards. Wow, really? So we're so when you get this one, this will be very impressive. We're hopping up here. You get this one right, then uh I'm gonna give you like you'll be an honorary besides Dr. Drew, you become an honorary oral and axofacial surgeon. Oh my gosh. I the pressure's on. I got this. With the ability probably at that point to bill insurance companies for your opinion. I love it. Yeah, because you'll get the same reimbursement, right? All right.

Sphenozygomatic Suture And Cheekbone Fixes

Speaker 10:06

Well, I know the second word is suture. I've heard that one. Suture. So the first one uh for our listeners, it has every uh list, it has every letter in the alphabet. Um it is so phenozygomatic suture. Very good. Very close. Wow, impressive. All right. Um, I think I've seen that on Wheel of Fortune before. Yeah, so phenozygomatic suture. It's right under the one that says a million dollars if you break. That is quite a word. Okay, this one again, relatively obvious what it means. Obviously, it's a suture that you're doing. But here's the thing sophenosiphonatic sounds very similar to me as uh schizophrenic. So I think it's when you're going in to do one suture, but then you either decide or are led to believe that you need to do a different suture. So in mid-surgery, you change it, and then it ends up being the correct thing that you needed to do. It's a coincidence, but it's also such a big deal and rare enough that they had to come up with a term for it. I like it. How close was he? I'm amazed. Wow, how did he get? I am I am a hundred percent amazed. Was that at all no make him an honorary? I mean, you actually you got it. Oh, he's no, no, you're not even close. But we had you goin, not even in the ballpark. So I like his response after you said that. So you're the so there's two types of sutures. You have the suture that are like the strings that when we sew things together, but also we've talked a lot about bone today. When bones form and grow together and different bones come together, the the the area where one bone maybe lays against another bone is called a suture. So the sphenozygomatic suture is where the sphenoid bone and the zygomatic bone come and lay together. What are those? And it comes along this long line. So it's it's the it's the connection that makes the lateral and superior part and everything of your um eye socket. So when we're actually fixing someone's cheekbone, their zygomatic bone is their cheekbone, one of the things that we look at to make sure that we've got things in the proper position. Because remember, earlier we talked about all the bones being curved and stuff. If we can get that curvature to line up and get that bone to tuck in along the suture and check that, then we know that we have the person's cheekbone back in the normal proper position. So that's the phenozygomatic suture. That's really cool. Think you could use that in conversation later today? I'm gonna try. You might get slapped in the phenozygomatic suture. Looks like the pseudozygomatic suture did a real good job. Yeah, you might get slapped in the phenozygomatic suture. Yeah, gotta be careful with that.

Wrap Up And Thanks

Speaker 12:49

All right, thank you so much, listener. Thank you, Dr. Drew, Dr. Steve. Word games are a blast. Love them. So that was what the heck. Stellar work. That was what the heck. What the heck is that? Dr. Ben and Friends. Dr. Ben and Friends