Gregory M. Ness, DDS, Guest Editor

The oral and maxillofacial surgery world is experiencing a resurgence of interest in temporomandibular joint disease and its surgical treatment, and this issue will be a valuable aid to those surgeons in training, or in practice, who wish to better understand contemporary operations performed on the temporomandibular joint. If you care to know why this is so, you may read on.

It is customary to recognize the article authors as experts in the field, but in this case it would be an understatement: the senior authors are truly a cross-section of the top temporomandibular joint surgeons in the world today. All are members of the American or European Societies of Temporomandibular Joint Surgeons, two institutions devoted to the exchange and advancement of knowledge in this field. It is my great honor to know these surgeons and scholars personally, and I am deeply grateful to each of them for their willingness to share their knowledge, not to mention their beautiful images, in this text. Furthermore, while the typical practice in the Atlas of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinics of North America series is to provide a list of Additional Readings at the end of each article, several of these excellent authorities possess such deep knowledge and scholarship that they have instead annotated their articles with formal references. We have chosen to retain this format in selected articles, where the outstanding illustrations one would expect from the Atlas are further strengthened by their foundation upon scientific citations. The astute reader will examine these references and allow them to enhance their understanding and interpretation of the author’s work.

I am indebted to the senior editors and publishers of the Atlas series for recognizing the need for a current surgical atlas of temporomandibular joint operations, and especially to Rich Haug, who entrusted the project to me. John Vassallo at Elsevier has been a terrific help and guide who can even sound patient and encouraging electronically by e-mail. My own article was made complete by its intraoperative photographs, through the work of Allen Jones, a spectacularly gifted photographer at Virginia Commonwealth University. And without a doubt, I am blessed to have a large, wonderful, and supportive family, the chief of which is amazing and encouraging Sara, my wife. I cannot describe her without resorting to platitudes, and yet they would all be true. If I had a throne, she would be the power behind it! I love my work, but I love her much more.