James Jeong recognized with AAOMS Scientific Presentation Award for 1st-time study
OCTOBER 2021
James Jeong MD, DMD, PGY-4 oral and maxillofacial surgery resident, was honored with the Oral Abstract Scientific Presentation Award at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons for his study "What is the orbital volume of African Americans," the first project of its type to attempt this determination.
His co-investigators included medical student researcher Andrew Manhan, MPH, and oral and maxillofacial surgery faculty members Gary Bouloux, DDS, MD, MDSc, Shelly Abramowicz, DMD, MPH, and Dina Amin, DDS.
Reconstruction of symmetry of the orbit, the cavity or socket of the skull in which the eye and its appendages are situated, is done to repair damage caused by trauma, congenital deformities, or pathology. For optimal results, precise measurement of orbital volume (OV) is imperative to avoid possible aesthetic and optical disruptions and/or complications.
Dr. Jeong's study sought to determine the racial and sex differences in OVs in African Americans (AA) so that orbital reconstruction in AA patients could be more precise.
"In the past, surgeons did not calculate orbital volume as a part of their surgical planning," says Dr. Jeong. "Today we have innovative technology and preoperative CT imaging that allows us to fabricate patient-specific implants, and having baseline, pre-morbid OV data at hand to incorporate into that planning has significantly improved surgical outcomes."
While historical values of OVs have been extrapolated from Caucasian orbits, the same has never been reported for AA orbits, despite the fact that volumes have been shown to differ between various racial groups. To redress this disparity, Dr. Jeong and his team implemented a retrospective investigation of successive subjects who received a maxillofacial CT scan at Grady Memorial Hospital from 2017-2020, comparing OVs of AA to Caucasians and right to left OVs in the same racial group.
The findings provided normative values for race and gender between AA and Caucasians, specifically showing that Caucasian males and females had a larger OV than AA males and females, and Caucasian and AA males had a larger OV than Caucasian and AA females. Having this data should significantly improve future preoperative surgical planning of orbital fractures as well as surgical outcomes in AA patients.