{"id":183504,"date":"2026-01-30T20:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T01:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/iowa-teen-recovering-after-surgeon-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-rebuild-jaw-wsvn-7news-miami-news-weather-sports\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T05:55:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T10:55:50","slug":"iowa-teen-recovering-after-surgeon-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-rebuild-jaw-wsvn-7news-miami-news-weather-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/iowa-teen-recovering-after-surgeon-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-rebuild-jaw-wsvn-7news-miami-news-weather-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"Iowa teen recovering after surgeon uses artificial intelligence to rebuild jaw – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iowa teen recovering after surgeon uses artificial intelligence to rebuild jaw – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/wsvn.com\/news\/us-world\/iowa-teen-recovering-after-surgeon-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-rebuild-jaw\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-30 20:37:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: wsvn.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWEST DES MOINES, Iowa (KCCI) \u2014 While waiting in a West Des Moines exam room, Mya Buie nervously applies her lip gloss. Three months ago, the 17-year-old had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. In this moment, she is waiting to be seen for a postoperative checkup. She hasn\u2019t liked medical settings since a shooting landed her in a Des Moines hospital\u2019s intensive care unit for several days.\u201cIt was kind of scary. It was traumatic,\u201d she said of the night her mother\u2019s ex-boyfriend shot her in the face during a fight just days before her birthday.On the other hand, her surgeon, Dr. Simon Wright, has been looking forward to this appointment all week. He calls Buie one of his most memorable and brave patients.\u201cI\u2019m gonna take a look under your chin,\u201d he says to Buie while carefully touching her face. The teenager was shot in the face with a .40-caliber bullet at close range. The impact of the bullet fractured and shattered her jaw into tiny fragments and permanently damaged four teeth.For years, Wright, a facial reconstruction trauma surgeon, has reconstructed facial bones by bending and molding titanium plates by hand to the injured area. It\u2019s a time-consuming and often erroneous process.\u201cThere is always a level of dissatisfaction, and it doesn\u2019t feel good to do something just good enough,\u201d Wright said.The manual work has now been replaced with modern technology. Doctors used artificial intelligence to read a CT scan of Buie\u2019s jaw, then a 3D printer turned that image into a custom jawbone plate.\u201cIt\u2019s so much easier than trying to bend a plate to get it perfect,\u201d Wright said. \u201cIt\u2019s no question a game-changer.\u201dDoctors say a customized jawbone plate allows for a more accurate fit, better aligns the jaw with a patient\u2019s teeth, and cuts surgery time in half. What makes this process so unique, Buie\u2019s customized plate was made in record time, a first for Des Moines trauma surgeons.\u201cThe ability to make a custom plate has been around for 10 years or more, but the ability to do it very quickly has not been,\u201d Wright said.What would normally take several weeks took only a few days. The plate was created in a lab in Jacksonville, Florida, put on a plane to the Des Moines International Airport, then hand-delivered to the hospital on a Friday night before the teenager\u2019s surgery first thing Saturday morning.\u201cThere is a lot of things that have to go right to do any kind of surgery at all, and to do something complicated like this, it\u2019s really an inspiring thing to be part of,\u201d Wright said, smiling. He also said this advancement serves as a reminder of the importance of supporting medical research because of its impact on people.\u201cThis came from the efforts of all kinds of people in different fields that have cross-pollinated. For example, 3D printing as a medical application, and at one point, it may not have begun with a medical endpoint in mind,\u201d he said.For trauma patients, time is of the essence. For Buie, time does heal. The high school junior is back to school with plans to graduate early. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery. Her new jawbone plate will eventually fuse to bone and be as strong as ever.\u201cI just thank God every day for giving me a second chance at life. I\u2019m very grateful. I can tell my story and spread the word of God with this story, like a testament.\u201dBuie will likely undergo additional surgeries. Next month, she will receive dental implants for her missing teeth.
\n\t\t\t\t\tThe-CNN-Wire\u2122 & \u00a9 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

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Iowa teen recovering after surgeon uses artificial intelligence to rebuild jaw – WSVN 7News |…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wsvn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/01\/013026-Iowa-teen-recovering-after-surgeon-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-rebuild-jaw.jpg?quality=60&strip=color","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-183504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183506,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183504\/revisions\/183506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}