January 22, 2004

TOPIC AND TENTATIVE TITLE OF PRESENTATION:
Orthodontic Jaw Wiring (OJW): The role dentistry plays in the control of compulsive overeating

Dear Dr. Momtaheni:

     (Note: all underlined phrases are hyperlinks to pages on my website.)

In response to your request for my CV, please go to the following hyperlink, Dr. Ted's Resume, on my website at www.drted.com. In addition, I am mailing you a hard copy.

The topic I would like to present is summarized on my website at: SITE ADDITIONS BY DATE. I have duplicated it below for your convenience:

December 13, 2003: Orthodontic Jaw Wiring is a service I provide. Providers of the OJW service are rare, be they orthodontists, dentists or oral surgeons. Never before now has anyone established a protocol for providing this service; I have done so. Naturally, would-be providers are concerned with legal and liability issues. See The Informed Consent for OJW and the FAQ's.

My initiation in to this field came from orthodontic patients who told me they were first wired by an oral surgeon because of trauma/injury/disease when they realized the potential of this method to control their weight. Perhaps our confreres in oral surgery have studied the long-range effects of IMF on the TMJ. To date no TMJ studies have been done on patients wired for OJW using the protocol I use for my patients (five weeks wired followed by five days unwired repeated as long as the patient is pleased with the progress of weight control).

The responses I have received from MANY grateful patients reinforces for me that OJW is a beneficial service.

Recently, I supported Ivan Naiman, a dentist in Colorado, who provided the service to his patient, Jay Freeman, instead of having him come to New York to have me do it. The patient wrote the following: (see the Second Forum on the Pros and Cons of OJW: responses to the letter of 9/22/03).
The chart entry for a recent patient of my own, AF illustrates the OJW approach. The accompanying photo documentation illustrates succinctly how OJW is done. The exact sequence of wiring is shown at OJW jaw wiring sequence.

The hyperlinks above will provide you with an overview of content that can be effectively edited and presented as an educational forum for the professionals in the field of dentistry.

With so much recent media attention to bariatric surgery which reports a mortality rate of three persons per 1,000 operations; OJW is a benign alternative by comparison. Orthodontic Jaw Wiring can assist properly selected* obese individuals from ever reaching that point where they must undergo life-threatening surgery.

Please consider this work as meriting presentation at the GNYDM.

Dr. Ted Rothstein, DDS, PhD

Specialist in Orthodontics for Adults and Children
35 Remsen St.
Brooklyn, NY  11201
WWW.DRTED.COM

*FAQs and read the answer to the Question: Who is not a good candidate for this procedure?

January 23, 2004: INITIAL RESPONSE FROM A COMMITTEE MEMBER
(Note: The term "IMF" below is an acronym for "inter-maxillary fixation" and refers to the jaw wiring that oral surgeons do when they wire the jaws together to provide healing in cases where the jaw has been fractured.You can see them at "IMF ARCH BARS". The device shown is unique in that it has a "quick-release" l

Dear Dr. Rothstein:

I started IMF for weight loss back in 1981 at Montefiore Medical
Center and I continued this service until 1986.  I felt the legal
implication of this modality was great and unclear.  So by the time
that I started my private practice, I decided not to provide this
service any longer.  I must tell you that the result was
impressive.  As we see significant  wt loss with our orthognathic
pts after 6 wks of IMF.

I will bring your name and the topic to the GNDM Organization
Committee and will get back to you.

Good luck.
David Momtaheni, D.M.D.