A Comment on Application of Hand Towel Drape over Dingman Mouth Gag

www.e-acfs.org pISSN 2287-1152 eISSN 2287-5603 102 Copyright © 2015 The Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Correspondence: Kun Hwang Department of Plastic Surgery, Inha University School of Medicine, 27 Inhang-ro, Jung-gu, Incheon 22332, Korea E-mail: [email protected] No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported. Received May 4, 2015 / Revised June 25, 2015 / Accepted July 15, 2015 To the Editor: I have read with great interest the article entitled, “Application of Hand Towel Drape over Dingman Mouth Gag,” by Choi and Park (Arch Craniofac Surg 2015;16:29-30) [1] and wish to share a comment. In the paper, the authors describe the usage of a towel drape over the mouth gag site. In Figs. 1 and 2, the towel covers the two lateral cheek retractors, tongue blades, and most of the upper and lower springs. While the authors state that this towel prevents suture material from being caught in the gag, I am afraid this precisely defeats the very purpose of the spring coils, whose design it is to hold sutures in place until they are ready to be tied. e idea of suture-indexing spring coils was rst adopted to mouth gag by Professor Kilner at Oxford prior to World War II. I would leave this comment with the quotation of someone who personally knew both Drs. Kilner and Dingman–Dr. Millard Jr. A Comment on Application of Hand Towel Drape over Dingman Mouth Gag