Maxfax: The Bridge between Medicine and Dentistry?

Dentistry and Medicine are eternally apart. Talk to any student of either discipline and they will give you a hundred ways the two departments and indeed the two student bodies differ. Considering this great divide between the two it is interesting to see that not a lot of light is shone on oral and maxillofacial surgery, a small specialty niche often referred to as the bridge between medicine and dentistry.

To rectify this situation, I decided to go out and talk to some consultants in this field. As it turns out Maxfax (Oral and Maxillofacial surgery) is a relatively new speciality, being born out of the two world wars. It primarily grew after World War 1 to treat patients who had had suffered devastating facial injuries. With experience, over time it became clear that the key to successfully fixing a fractured jaw was in correctly re-establishing the dental occlusion. Historically thus OMS consultants were dental graduates, however as the scope of this specialty has increased it has grown to include a medical qualification as well.

OMS clinicians are involved in treating a wide range of diseases of the head and neck, looking at the jaw, face and the hard and soft tissues of the oral (mouth) and maxillofacial (jaws and face region). The specialty is often called the bridge between medicine and dentistry as it involves treating conditions that require expertise from both backgrounds including head and neck cancers, salivary gland diseases, facial disproportion, facial pain, impacted teeth, and tumors of the jaws as well as numerous problems affecting the oral mucosa. 

Medicine students (including myself) are often heard bemoaning the length of their degree, often complaining about how five – and six if you intercalate – years is too long to be in education. However for maxfax students this time is actually doubled!! The UK and indeed the majority of the countries in the EU look at maxfax as being a dental and medical specialty and thus require you to undertake both degrees for this specialty. The States, Canada and Australia on the other hand, mark it as a dental specialty and only allow dentists to pursue this field, without the need to obtain a medical qualification as well.

When asked about what advice the consultants in this field would give to students choosing specialities, they all agreed that students should focus on something that comes naturally to them. 

“Finding something that was very enjoyable and came quite naturally [was important]. I think that’s the key to everything. Keep looking for things and if something comes along that is natural, you don’t really have to think about it, then you’ve found something that is for you.”