In-House 3D-Printed Surgical Guides with a Minimally Invasive Design for Asymmetric Mentoplasty: A Case Series.

Area of Science:

• Plastic Surgery
• Digital Dentistry
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Mentoplasty is crucial for facial harmony, especially correcting chin asymmetries.
• Patient-specific surgical guides improve accuracy but face workflow and accessibility challenges in public healthcare.
• Digital planning and 3D printing offer solutions for customized surgical guides.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of an in-house digital workflow for creating patient-specific 3D-printed guides for asymmetric mentoplasty.
• To assess the clinical implementation of customized guides in a public healthcare setting.

Main Methods:

• A case series of three patients undergoing asymmetric mentoplasty using in-house 3D-printed guides.
• Virtual surgical planning utilizing cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) data.
• Design and fabrication of guides via an in-house digital workflow, followed by postoperative CBCT assessment.

Main Results:

• Postoperative CBCT confirmed good agreement between planned virtual outcomes and achieved chin positions.
• The 3D-printed guides accurately facilitated osteotomy and chin positioning for both symmetric and asymmetric movements.
• The in-house fabrication was cost-effective, required minimal material, and had no major complications.

Conclusions:

• The proposed in-house digital workflow is technically feasible for asymmetric mentoplasty.
• Customized 3D-printed guides show encouraging accuracy in chin positioning for selected cases.
• Larger studies with standardized accuracy assessments are needed to validate these findings.