Help! Surgery but have trismus

[JobGloves]

My mouth only opens about 2cm at the moment. Doing all the exercises but will the surgery be able to go ahead? (Surgery not in my mouth).

What kind of surgery? Minor op under a local anaesthetic? Yes. Major surgery with a general? Maybe not. This is something only your specialist can answer.

Major surgery under General. It's quite urgent so I'm worried about delays.

Could a temporary tracheostomy be fitted? My husband has trismus and has one, albeit his is permanent.

A trachy is quite a dramatic solution! You need an assessment with the anaesthetist to assess and make a sensible plan. Why do you have trismus? If its muscle related a lot of that will go with the Anaesthetic drugs. Or perhaps a muscle relaxing premed? I've worked in maxfax theatres for years, our patients have limited opening/odd anatomy as standard but we have excellent anaesthetists for our lists that make it easy. Absolute worst case I would imagine would be an awake fibre optic intubation if it really wasn't possible in the normal way and surgery was very urgent. With our weird and wonderful patients that's still a rare necessity. Get an Anaesthetic assessment, they'll work it out.

I had a wisdom tooth out and the resulting difficult jaw opening doesn't seem to be easing at all. So I think it is muscle related. I'm seeing a nurse for pre op tomorrow so will mention it then.

How long ago was the wisdom tooth? And what exercises are you doing? Are you doing gradual opening with lollypop sticks?
In general, the more difficult your airway the better an anaesthetist you get so I'd look on it as a positive that you're going to get someone at the top of their game!

A week ago so still early days. My surgery is a week on Monday so enough time for it to get better. It just doesn't seem to be improving at all yet which is what's worrying me.
Dentist told me to do lots of moving jaw to left and right and in circles and opening as wide as I can and stretching for a few seconds.

@Darkrainbow thank you. Your posts have been really useful.

Very early days! In all likely hood it'll be naturally sorted by then. If it was a lower wisdom tooth it's more likely to be bruising from where the needle had to pass through the muscle and it will heal. Upper will just be from mouth opening and will settle even faster.
The lollypop sticks (get a pack from the craft section in homebargins etc) are to gradually increase your opening. So make a stack at the height you can comfortably open now, then add one more. Sit with that in and consciously relax the muscles, then very gradually add one more each time. Do it 3 times a day, don't force moving up.
In my experience this isn't going to be an issue, there's not a mechanical issue physically preventing opening, it's muscle spasm and pain. Once you're drugged the muscles will relax & /or we can force your jaw further than you can awake. It may set your jaw recovery back (might also cure it with a bit of luck!) but it sounds like your op is the more important of the two.

Talk to the pre-assessment nurse - it may be that an anaesthetist is available to see you when you’re at the clinic and make some sort of plan. It it’s genuinely muscle related then it may not be such a problem. If it’s because of infection (which is what one of the other threads you started recently suggests) then it’s likely safer to defer, but that would depend a little in the operation you’re booked to have. (DOI: anaesthetist)

Thank you. I saw my dentist who couldn't see any signs of infection so thinks it's all (pain and reduced opening) muscle related. She gave me some exercises to do and I'm going back on Tuesday. I will mention it to the nurse and speak to the dentist again next week.