The incidence of postoperative wound healing problems following sagittal ramus osteotomies stabilized with miniplates and monocortical screws.

Purpose: Titanium plates and monocortical screws are commonly used to stabilize the mandible following sagittal split ramus osteotomies. Despite widespread use of this type of fixation, there is a paucity of large studies evaluating the infection rate and need for hardware removal.

Materials And Methods: This study is a retrospective cohort evaluation of 1,066 consecutive mandibular sagittal ramus osteotomies in 533 patients, performed between January 2002 and December 2003.