Case 1

March 2009

This a yearling called Casanova who has a condition called Parrot Mouth or Brachygnathism. As you can see his top incisors are not sitting properly on the bottom incisors and are overshot.

I have started to try and correct this problem by performing a Riedinger Procedure on him. It involves using his teeth as natural braces to force his lower teeth to catch up to the uppers and fit together properly. It is necessary to keep changing his teeth every 10 – 12 weeks to maintain the corrective growth and can sometimes take 6 or 7 visits to gain a result. I have worked on him twice already and at last a bit of progress is being made. I will update the pictures each time I see him and will try to get a better photo next time.


September 2009








As you can see the mandible has shifted forward significantly and we have nearly achieved our goal of a normal mouth.

 

These came out of a 5 year old broodmare that was heavily in foal but in extremely poor condition due to these 2 teeth causing such pain that in the end she simply would not eat.As you can see they were very large and measured over 5 inches long each. She is now in much better health and eating normally again.

 

This poor horse is a 2 and a half year old sport horse who was exceptionally nervous of people, had severe injuries to 2 of his lower left teeth due to massive trauma and  could not even tolerate his head being touched whilst awake. It was decided that for the safety of both horse and people that it was necessary to perform the surgery under general anaesthetic. It was a very difficult procedure and took well over 3 hours to carry out.
His lower left third premolar ( PM 3 or 4/7)  had broken into several pieces and could not be removed as we had hoped as a complete tooth but had to be retrieved piece by piece in what was a very long and intricate operation.
After this the fourth lower left premolar (PM 4 or 4/8) had to be extracted. Fortunately this was in much larger pieces but initially we needed to remove the deciduous cap before we could pursue the adult tooth behind it.
After the teeth had been extracted the surgeons inserted plaster of Paris with antibiotics in it into the space where the teeth had been taken from to prevent any further infection and to strengthen the jaw.


The whole experience for me personally was incredible.


I have been fortunate enough to work with many very experienced and skilled veterinary surgeons throughout my dental career and would like to thank them all for giving me the chance to work with them.

 

These 4 Enormous teeth were taken out of a 14' 2'' connemara pony mare who had a foal at foot and was amazingly still managing to eat. She was in quite poor condition but considering the way her teeth were she was coping incredibly well. She had a lot of food packing between her 3/7, 3/8 and 3/9 and the same on her 4/7,4/8 and This isolated the two lower central pre-molars and had caused them to become displaced and out of alignment with the rest of the teeth in the arcade. After spending a lot of time removing all the trapped food from between these particular teeth we began to spread and elevate them before we could extract them. It was quite a lengthy operation but she was a very co-operative patient.

As you can see from this picture her lower jaw ( mandible ) was very swollen.