The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics, namely, cause, type, site of fracture, and epidemiology data, of zygomaticomaxillary complex (ZMC) fractures. Hospital records and computed tomographic scans of 468 patients, treated for ZMC fractures at the Department of Craniomaxillofacial and Oncological Surgery between January 1990 and December 1995 and between January 2000 and December 2007, were selected and analyzed according to several factors including age, sex, cause, type, site of fracture, alcohol use before injury treatment modalities, complications, and mean treatment delay. A total of 468 patients (400 males and 68 females; male-to-female ratio, 5.88:1) were included in this study. Their ages ranged from 15 to 85 years (mean ± SD age, 37.1 ± 14.83 y). Type B, by Zingg classification, was the most common type of ZMC fractures and accounted for 73.1% of cases. Assaults (64.5%), traffic accidents (13.9%), falls (13.0%), sports accidents (5.8%), and work accidents (2.8%) were noted. More than one-third of all the patients experienced injury after alcohol consumption. Of these patients, 96.6% were treated surgically. The most favored technique was miniplate osteosynthesis. The complication rate associated with the inaccurate reduction of the fractures was the most common. In this group of complications, minor asymmetry was the most common and occurred in 35 patients. Mean treatment delay was 42.7 hours. It ranged from 0.25 to 1080 hours, and the lowest value was observed in work accidents (2.7 hours). Facial trauma can result in fractures limited to 1 component of the tetrapod structure but more commonly results in a tetrapod fracture involving all 4 buttresses. Males are the most common victims of ZMC fractures, and assault remains the major cause of ZMC injuries in Poland, like in most developed countries. Alcohol involvement among trauma patients is high, especially in case of assaults and falls. Each patient with ZMC fracture should be evaluated individually.

Goldenhar syndrome is a rare congenital defect characterized by ocular symptoms including (epibulbar dermoids, microphthalmia, anophthalmia, eyes asymmetry/dysmorphy, cleft eyelid, exophthalmia, strabismus), auricular symptoms (dacryocystitis), preauricular appendages, preauricular fistulas, ear asymmetry, microtia, atresia of the external auditory canal), craniofacial deformities (cleft face, cleft lip, cleft palate, macrostomia, bifid tongue, hypoplasia of the mandible, hypoplasia of the maxilla, asymmetry of the mandible and maxilla, malocclusion, tooth discrepancies, agenesis of third molars and second premolars, supernumerary teeth, enamel and dentin malformations, delay in tooth development), and skeletal abnormalities (cleft spine, microcephaly, dolichocephaly, plagiocephaly, vertebral defects) or abnormalities of internal organs. The degree of abnormalities vary from severe to mild. In this article, we present a long-term observation of a patient with Goldenhar syndrome. During the patient’s life, the intensification of anomalies varied. We describe preoperative and postoperative orthodontic treatment and surgical correction procedures of maxillofacial deformation.

Overall prognosis for patients with oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSSC) is still unfavourable. However, there is a hope that a novel diagnostic method may establish better cancer biology characteristics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the isotope ratio of nitrogen and carbon in OSSC as compared to margin and healthy tissue. A total of 18 patients with OSSC were included in the study. Specimens collected covered: four tumour, four margin and two healthy oral mucosa samples. The samples underwent further procedures: lyophilization and isotope ratio mass spectrometry. Measurements of the ratio of stable isotopes of nitrogen ¹⁵N/¹⁴N and carbon ¹³C/¹²C were performed. It is noticeable that the highest average nitrogen concentration was observed in tumour 12 ± 0.4% and the lowest in healthy tissues 8 ± 0.9% (p < 0.00001). The highest average carbon content was observed in healthy tissues 57 ± 2.2% and the lowest in tumour 46 ± 1.3% (p < 0.00001). Moreover, values of ¹⁵N/¹⁴N expressed in delta notation were the highest in healthy tissues 9.84 ± 0.61 and the lowest in tumour 8.92 ± 0.58. Values of ¹³C/¹²C tended to be higher in tumour −22.2 ± 0.89 and the lowest in healthy tissues −23.7 ± 1.2. Tumour tissues differ in isotopic composition from tissues taken from margin and healthy tissues taken from distant oral mucosa.

To compare noise levels in subtraction images produced by four methods of geometric alignment. 50 pairs of intraoral radiographs (Digora Optime; Soredex, Tuusula, Finland) were used in this study. Two programs were used to correct geometric differences: ToothVis 1.4 (TV) and DentalStudio 2.0 (DS). Three reference points were manually positioned in both programs (methods 1 and 2); four (method 3) and ten (method 4) reference points were positioned within TV in each of the 50 pairs of images. The standard deviation (SD) of the histogram defining the distribution of grey shades in the subtraction image was used as the statistical parameter for evaluation of homogeneity, i.e. the noise in the subtracted images. The mean and median shade of grey values were lower for images after geometric correction in TV (126.6\126.8, 126.9\126.8 and 126.1\126.7, for three- four- and ten-point alignment, respectively) than those performed with the positioning module of DS (128.7\127.5) (P<0.05). For the SD, the mean values were significantly lower with TV (4.6, 4.0 and 3.3 for three-, four- and ten-point alignment, respectively) than with DS (6.8). The range of SD values was the largest for four-point alignment with TV (0.7-15.4), smaller for three-point alignment with DS (1.5-15.4) and three-point alignment with TV (0.5-13), and the smallest with ten-point alignment in TV (0.5-8.7). The SD of the grey-shade histogram showed that subtraction images produced with ToothVis 1.4 software were statistically less noisy than images produced with Dental Studio 2.0 software. There is a relationship between the number of reference points chosen and the noise in the subtraction images.