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Delays in treatment may complicate the treatment of mandibular trauma, leading to a bone healing in an abnormal position and to a posttraumatic mandibular deformity such as malunion, malocclusion, and asymmetry. All these features may make delayed treatment a challenging issue. Therefore, early reduction and fixation of displaced mandibular fractures is mandatory to allow precocious healing and return to the normal function. In this article, we describe a patient treated in our unit for a diagnosed posttraumatic malocclusion after lack of primary trauma treatment.

We investigated the etiology, incidence, and complications of patients with mandibular fracture in Amsterdam for a period of 10 years. Between January 2000 and January 2009, 213 patients with surgically treated mandibular fracture were identified. Two hundred thirteen patients were included with a mean age of 32.5 (SD, 15.2) years. Male-female ratio was 2.2:1. A total of 410 fracture lines were identified. In violence-related injuries, angle fractures were proved to be the main fracture site. For male patients, violence (33.6%) was the main cause of injury. The most common cause for female patients was traffic related. In 169 patients, open reduction with internal fixation was performed in 17 patients without intermaxillary fixation. Twenty-seven patients were treated only with intermaxillary fixation. A total of 1738 screws and 393 plates were used. Sixty patients presented with complications. The results of this report are partly in line with other studies and provides important data for the design of plans for injury prevention.