Facial Trauma
By Dr. Weber
Facial trauma can feel frightening and unsettling for anyone to think about. Yet when an accident happens to you or a loved one that causes significant injuries to the face, it is important to know and understand your options for treatment.
In this article, Northland Plastic Surgery’s Dr. Weber describes the two categories of facial trauma, how these injuries occur, and how a board-certified plastic surgeon can help you or your loved one recover.
Soft Tissue Injuries vs. Bone Injuries
Facial trauma can be categorized into two broad categories: soft tissue injuries and bone injuries.
Soft tissue injuries involve lacerations or cuts to the skin, and they are more common than you’d think. In the US, approximately 3 million people receive emergency treatment for traumatic facial injuries, and most of these are soft tissue related. As you might expect, the “T”-shaped area of the face that includes the forehead, nose, lips is the most common area for lacerations to occur.
Whether the soft tissue trauma was a result of a dog bite, a sports injury, a car accident, or something else, the typical treatment for this type of injury is suture repair (stitches). Your surgeon will clean the wound, check for any major damage, and close the wound to initiate healing. Afterwards, proper wound care at home will be essential to your full recovery.
While your body will do most of the work to heal, you will likely develop a scar which may be reduced via scar revision surgery once healing has fully taken place.
A more serious and complex type of facial trauma is bone injury, also known as facial fracture, when one or more of the bones in the face breaks. The most common breaks occur in the nose, cheekbone, and jawbone. This type of facial injury results from intense trauma such as a serious car accident, an assault, or a slip and fall.
At Northland Plastic Surgery, we tend to treat facial fractures more often in the summer when motorcycle accidents, car accidents, and four-wheeler accidents are more common. During winter, we’ll see victims of snowmobile accidents as well. We also treat fractures that result from sports related injuries. For instance, I once treated a patient who had a baseball ricochet off their back and broke their cheek bone. You’d be surprised to discover how easily and quickly someone can get hurt.
How Facial Fractures Are Treated
Most facial trauma patients are taken to the emergency room following their injuries. Occasionally, if it’s a minor injury, then they might go to their primary care doctor or their pediatrician first. But most of the time, you will need to visit the emergency room to receive immediate attention if your face has been fractured or severely lacerated.
While it may feel strange or morbid for most people to think about, facial trauma is right in our wheelhouse as plastic surgeons. That means we spend a lot of time studying and performing facial reconstruction surgeries in order to take care of patients just like you (or your loved one) when you show up in the emergency room.
Depending on the severity of injuries, we are trained in several techniques to repair or reconstruct the face, including bone resetting, wiring, bone grafts, and surgery. Severe facial traumas resulting from motor vehicle accidents, require extensive time and skill to repair. In those instances, we expect to spend pretty much the entire day piecing the patient’s face back together. From a training and technological standpoint, it’s very gratifying as a plastic surgeon to be able to use all your skills to help someone recover from that.
What to Know if Facial Trauma Happens to You (Or a Loved One) In Duluth
My colleagues and I at Northland Plastic Surgery provide coverage for both emergency rooms in Duluth. This includes the emergency rooms at St. Mary’s Medical Center and St. Luke’s Hospital. We are proud to serve our community in this capacity.
If you find yourself in one of these emergency rooms with facial trauma, rest assured that you are in good hands. Our plastic surgeons are board-certified, which means we’ve gone through extensive training to be able to take care of any facial trauma that we encounter.
While your healing and full recovery is our top goal, we also understand you’ll want to look as normal as possible following your treatment. As plastic surgeons, we have extensive experience with this and work hard to ensure you are cosmetically and aesthetically satisfied with your treatment. For all that you’ve been through, you deserve nothing but the best from us.
To learn more about our team or services at Northland Plastic Surgery, contact us here.
