Orthognathic treatment. This young adult male patient had a severe anterior open bite – note his back teeth are closed yet his front teeth are far from being closed. He was initially treated with dental braces – orthodontics – in our office and then oral surgery, orthognathic surgery, to reposition his jaw bones. Note we used metal orthodontic brackets in this case because of the surgical component of this treatment. The oral surgery was performed in a hospital operating room. The term orthognathic is typically used to describe dental treatment that involves both orthodontics and oral surgery. There can be a tremendous variation in orthognathic procedures such that some might actually involve minor orthodontics and major oral surgery or the other way around. Similarly it might need a lot of both braces and surgery or just a little of both. Sometimes the oral surgery might only involve the repositioning of a few teeth or sometimes the jaw bones themselves need to be repositioned. Similarly for orthodontics, sometimes only a few teeth need to be moved or sometimes many teeth need to be moved.  Regardless of the amount of orthodontics needed braces must still be applied to the teeth to help stabilize the jaw bones during healing.