WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (KCCI) – As she waits in an exam room in West Des Moines, Mya Buie nervously applies her lip gloss. Three months ago, the 17-year-old underwent multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. She is currently awaiting a post-operative check-up. She doesn’t like medical conditions since a shooting landed her in the intensive care unit of a Des Moines hospital for several days.
“It was pretty scary. It was traumatic,” she said of the night her mother’s ex-boyfriend shot her in the face during a fight just days before her birthday.
On the other hand, her surgeon, Dr. Simon Wright, has been looking forward to this appointment all week. He calls Buie one of his most memorable and courageous patients.
“I’m going to look under your chin,” he tells Buie as he gently touches her face. The teen was shot in the face at close range with a .40 caliber bullet. The impact of the bullet broke and shattered her jaw into small fragments and permanently damaged four teeth.
For years, Wright, a facial reconstruction trauma surgeon, has reconstructed facial bones by bending and shaping titanium plates by hand over the injured area. It is a time-consuming and often incorrect process.
“There’s always some level of dissatisfaction, and it doesn’t feel good to do something that’s just good enough,” Wright said.
The manual work has now been replaced by modern technology. Doctors used artificial intelligence to read a CT scan of Buie’s jaw, then a 3D printer converted that image into a custom jawbone plate.
“It’s so much easier than trying to bend a plate to get it perfect,” Wright said. “It is without a doubt a game changer.”
Doctors say a custom-made jawbone plate allows for a more precise fit, better aligns the jaw with a patient’s teeth and cuts surgery time in half. What makes this process so unique is that Buie’s custom plate was made in record time, a first for Des Moines trauma surgeons.
“The ability to custom make a plate has been around for a decade or more, but the ability to do it very quickly doesn’t exist yet,” says Wright.
What would normally take several weeks only took a few days. The plate was made in a laboratory in Jacksonville, Florida, put on a plane to Des Moines International Airport and then hand-delivered to the hospital on Friday evening before the teen went into surgery on Saturday morning.
“There are a lot of things that have to go right in order to perform any operation, and to do something as complicated as this is really inspiring to be a part of,” Wright said with a smile. He also said this progress is a reminder of the importance of supporting medical research for its impact on people.
“This came from the efforts of all kinds of people in different fields that have cross-pollinated. For example, 3D printing as a medical application, and at some point it may not have started with a medical endpoint in mind,” he said.
For trauma patients, time is of the essence. For Buie, time heals. The high school student is back to school and plans to graduate early. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery. Her new jawbone plate will eventually fuse with the bone and be as strong as ever.
“I thank God every day for giving me a second chance at life. I am very grateful. I can tell my story and spread the word of God with this story, like a testament.”
Buie will likely undergo more surgeries. Next month she will receive dental implants for her missing teeth.
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