Mandibular Repositioning Appliance Following Resection Crossing the Midline- A3D Printed Guide
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is one of the latest manufacturing processes which has evolved dramatically over the past three decades. The benefits of AM have steadily stepped in to almost all modern industries. The medical and dental industries may have benefitted the most in this regard. In the medical industry, every complex surgery has unique requirements in planning or execution, where it needs customized surgical guides or tools. In patients with mandibular tumors where a surgical resection is performed crossing the midline, currently there is no guide or tool available for repositioning the mandible to the patient’s original anatomy. To overcome this, an attempt has been made to develop a customized repositioning appliance, which can be used for pre surgical planning and the same can be transferred to the patient during surgery. The repositioning appliance is developed using the patient's CT data which is then processed with the use of medical translation software. The final patient specific repositioning appliance is fabricated using AM technology. This guide has been used on the models of the jaws requiring resection to check their efficacy and the condylar repositioning has been seen to be close to the pre-surgical position. This appliance is useful for pre-surgical planning, pre-bending and adaptation of the reconstruction plate to the mandible and also to reposition the condyles to their original positions after the resection.