The story of mouth gags

Abstract

Background: Intra-oral surgeries such as cleft palate repair essentially require holding of the jaws in the open position to facilitate access to the oral cavity, which is mostly achieved with the use of mouth gags. Materials and Methods: The objective of this article is to present an account of various types and modifications of gags as surgeons, anesthetists, and innovators attempt to make that ideal mouth gag. The authors present this compendium of development of mouth gags using articles sourced from Medline, surgical catalogs, museums, ancient manuscripts, original quotes, techniques, and illustrations. Results: This article describes notable types and variants of mouth gags with an attempt to classify them. Conclusions: The huge number of modifications done and reports of newer variants appearing at regular intervals goes to prove that we are still far from developing the ideal mouth gag.

Keywords

• cleft palate
• instruments
• mouth gags
• palate repair