Pediatric Maxillofacial Surgery

Dr. Vigliante welcomes children with oral/maxillofacial needs to his practice. Part of his training included many hours treating children at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one of the most prestigious children’s hospitals in the country.

Services include treatments for jaw deformities, facial infections, cleft palate, prominent oral frenula, impacted and misaligned teeth, and prominent ears.

One oral problem seen in childhood is the medical term ankyloglossia, aka. “tongue-tied.” This disturbing problem is easily cured with a simple surgical procedure to release the tip of the tongue so that the child may speak words freely. Failure to identify this problem early in childhood results in children being treated many hours by speech therapists without improvement in pronunciation. Since this is a physical ailment, resulting in the tongue being anchored to the floor of the mouth, the correct treatment is a lingual frenectomy. This allows the child to immediately pronounce words that he or she could not pronounce before. You could imagine the sense of relief for the patient and the parents after this immediate cure.

Another gratifying treatment for the patient and the doctor is Otoplasty or Cosmetic Ear Surgery. Otoplasty is one of the most common elective procedures performed in young children. Many times children are teased and picked on because of their ears sticking out too much. Cosmetic Ear Surgery can change all that with a procedure that can be done in the office setting to place the ears back where they should be so that the person can feel “normal” again. The optimum time to have this surgery is between the ages of 4-5. This allows the child to have normal looking ears before he or she begins kindergarten.