[Orthognathic surgery of the edentulous: a particular form of preprosthetic surgery]

It is not unusual to find patients who have lost posterior teeth or who are totally toothless, approaching our dental surgeon colleagues in cases of difficulties, and even prosthetic impossibility, nearly always associated or in relation with skeletic maxilo-mandibular imbalance. Orthognatic surgery of the toothless should thus satisfy the essential need for prosthesis but should also re-establish the unbalanced facial architecture which can be the only guarantee of a stable result. This therefore requires true pre-prosthetic surgery in which clinical analysis, cranial-facial architectural analysis and great care in making the provisional and final prosthesis, constitute the essential stages of diagnosis and therapy.