Multidisciplinary management in panfacial trauma: A clinical study

Management of panfacial fractures lacks standardized multidisciplinary pathways and variability in coordination, surgical sequencing and airway planning may contribute to delays and postoperative complications. Therefore, it is of interest to assess if a structured multidisciplinary team (MDT) referral system leads to an improvement in process and outcome measures versus usual care where patients are referred sequentially. A comparison of a single-center cohort with two different treatment strategies; primary outcomes were time-to-definitive fixation and major postoperative complications. Secondary outcomes were airway strategy, prolonged hospitalization, reoperation rate and functional occlusal alignment at 3 months. MDT pathway was found to lead to reduction in time to definitive management and less complications advocating the use of structured-multidisciplinary workflow in panfacial trauma services.