It is a specialty that took off in the din of the First World War, responsible for some 50,000 soldiers disfigured by bullets and shrapnel.
“This large number of broken mouths was a surprise and nothing had been imagined for their care in terms of reconstruction
, explains Sophie Delaporte, historian, lecturer at the University of Picardie-Jules-Verne ( Amiens) and author of the book
Faces of War
(Éditions Belin, 2017)
.
It is therefore general surgeons who have transposed general surgery techniques to try to reconstruct the skeleton and the facial envelope in order to allow these men to be able to breathe, eat, communicate again.
Maxillofacial surgery disappeared between the wars and only reappeared at the end of the Second World War, thanks in particular to two surgeons, Léon Dufourmentel and Maurice Virenque, and to the birth of the first maxillofacial surgery department in 1946. …
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