This permits a moderate amount of jaw movement and relatively clear speech, but inhibits the ingestion of solid foods, forcing patients to adhere to a liquid diet.
Once the bones have set (usually after 4–6 weeks, sometimes two or three months), the wiring is removed under local anesthesia or nitrous oxide sedation.
IMF is also used to aid weight loss; various studies from the 1970s and early 1980s used ivy loops and cap splints to wire the jaws together to enforce a liquid diet until such time as sufficient weight loss had been achieved; this was typically around nine months but in one study could be as long as 17 months.
However, a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1981 found that jaw wiring could be effective if aftercare were provided, in this case a nylon cord passed around the patient's waist after weight loss had been achieved, which would remind them if they started to put weight back on.
[5] John Garrow, the co-author of that study, defended the practice in a 1999 letter, calling it "a safer and less expensive alternative to gastroplasty" and pointing to his positive results when accompanied with the waist cord.
[6] Conventional jaw wiring for weight loss remains in use in Nigeria and South Africa, though in the latter, dentists are said to perform the procedure reluctantly, as they know it is ineffective but patients say they will find someone else to do it.