Outcome of Orthognathic Surgery – Patient Centred Approach
11th January 2021
Categories: Patient Outcomes
Over recent decades, orthognathic surgery has become an integral part of maxillofacial surgery in the United Kingdom (UK) with the vast majority of this type of surgery being undertaken underthe NHS umbrella. There is an increasing focus in the NHS on measuring the success of treatment, not only in terms of the clinical outcomes achieved, but also by evaluating patients’ experiences of the delivery of care.
The majority of orthognathic treatment is initiated by the patient or their parents to improve appearance and/ or functionbut despite this muchof the orthognathic literature has been focussed on the technical aspects of the surgical procedures and the clinical outcomes achievedwith less attention given to what patients themselves perceive as being important in the delivery of treatmentand the outcome of treatment.
There is evidence to suggest that there is a mismatch between the issues that clinicians and patients perceive to be important in the delivery of care. Since the patient is the ultimate judge of the quality of care they receive it is now recommended that patient-based measures be used to assess both the outcome and the appropriateness of the delivery of treatment. These measures are based on issues of importance to patients rather than clinicians.
Having realised the importance of patient-based outcomes the team in Birmingham over the last decade have evaluated their own patients views on the quality of the treatment undertaken to optimise and improve this service.
In addition to the patient satisfaction data some patient focus groups comprising of post surgery were set up to identify what patients felt about the information they would have liked prior to their actual surgery. The topics and themes outlined were then used to develop a patient centred “Jaw Surgery’ booklet which is nowgiven to patients prior to their surgery (see below).
