Functional disturbances of the inferior alveolar nerve after sagittal osteotomy of the mandibular ramus: operating technique for prevention.

The high frequency of permanent functional disturbance of the inferior alveolar nerve after sagittal osteotomy of the mandibular ramus is a disadvantage to which attention is always drawn in the different operating statistics. The authors, on the basis of previous experimental research, and in order to reduce the incidence of this disadvantage, have carried out sagittal osteotomy of the ramus in a series of patients by performing the splitting of the two cortical plates using a thin cement spatula as a chisel. The results have been extremely encouraging as the authors have observed only one case of permanent functional deficit of the inferior alveolar nerve and they have even noticed a very low incidence of temporary impairment.