• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.586-590
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• 2008

Construction of an obturator for rehabilitation of a patient who underwent a maxillectomy is vital. Routinely a constructed obturator includes denture portion. A patient who may present anatomical limitations due to surgical or radiotherapy complications often challenges the clinician. Purpose: This clinical report describes a patient with severe trismus after surgical resection and radiotherapy treatment of a tumor in the upper left maxilla. Conclusion: This report describes the concepts of using a rotational path insertion for an obturator and a separately constructed maxillary denture. The stability and retention of the obturator were obtained from anatomical features. Where as these were achieved through magnetic attachments and the remaining edentulous ridge to ensure esthetic and function of the prosthesis.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.207-212
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• 1988

Maxillary defects are a result of necessary cancer surgery, congenital anomaly or trauma. Ideally the patient with the aquired maxillary defect should be provided with an obturator prosthesis that is comfortable, restores adequate speech, deglutition, and mastication, and is acceptable cosmetically. This is a case report of open type hollow obturator delivered in the partial maxillectomy treated patient. The satisfied result obtained as follows: The open type hollow obturator has the advantage of easy fabrication, lightness, easy cleaning and restores adquate speech.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.329-336
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• 2009

In the case of congenital malformation, acquired trauma, or maxillectomy by neoplasm, the defect in maxilla is combined with nasal cavity, maxillary sinus and oral cavity. This results in abnormal function in pronunciation, mastication, and swallowing. In this situation, the purposes of prosthodontics are also applied. The purposes of obturator for acquired maxillary deficiency patients are restoring pronunciation, mastication, and swallowing, and make patients comfortable and esthetic satisfaction. Reducing weight of the obturator makes edentulous ridge heathy and functional. It also improves patients' comfort. Hollow obturator also reduces unnecessary stress because improves physiologic function, as it weights less than 6.55-33.06% compare to usual one. This case presents the double-processing method for maxillary obturator in the patient treated hemi-maxillectomy due to malignancy neoplasm. We report this case because the patient acquired functional and esthetic satisfaction from double-processing obturator.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.337-342
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• 2011

Congenital or traumatic loss on the oral and maxillary area or the loss of jaws due to the surgical excision of a tumor causes functional problems, such as masticatory and swallowing disorders, phonetic problems and psychological disorders in patients. In most cases, a prosthetic restoration is needed to resolve these problems and restore the damaged tissue and function. When loss occurs on the maxilla, foods and liquids leak into the nasal cavity, and a nasal sound can be heard due to air leakage into the removed area. In these cases, the palatal obturator can be used to improve the esthetic and functional aspects because it restores the removed area of the maxilla and closes the opened route between the oral cavity and maxillary sinus or nasal cavity. In this case report, a palatal obturator was applied to patients who had a hemimaxillectomy due to the occurrence of squamous cell carcinoma on the right maxillary area. Therefore, fundamental functions, such as phonetic and swallowing functions were restored, and the esthetic aspects of the facial profile were improved.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.349-355
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• 2020

The use of an obturator prosthesis for patients with maxillary defects is a common treatment method to improve their oral function and achieve esthetic satisfaction. However, due to various difficulties and complexities, conventional methods for fabricating dental obturators continue to pose a challenge for dentists and patients, as well as laboratory technicians. CAD-CAM technologies may make it simple to fabricate maxillofacial prostheses including hollow obturators, which could improve comfort for clinicians by reducing burdensome manipulations. In addition, patients without a specialist in their vicinity will be able to be treated via cooperation between a nearby general practitioner and a distant prosthodontist. The aim of this clinical report is to investigate the possibility of using digitally fabricated maxillofacial prostheses that can be designed in one location, and manufactured in another in clinical situations.

• Journal of Technologic Dentistry
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.24-30
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• 2022

This research introduces the manufacturing process of the metal-framework of one of the maxillary partial dentures, the "obturator", using milling wax-blocks, for patients with palate loss due to oral cancer. It explains the protocol of taking the patient's oral impression, preparation of a working cast, scanning, designing using a computer-aided design program, investing the milling wax-blocks, and completing the obturator. This method does not follow the traditional wax and agar process thereby reducing the errors arising during the manufacturing process and decreasing the time, material, and labor required. Moreover, the retention, stability, and compatibility of the metal framework were observed to be high in both the working cast and oral cavity.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.30-34
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• 2020

Maxillectomy is performed to remove the tumor in the palate, maxillary sinus, buccal mucosa or nasal cavity. The resection range depends on the size and the extent of the tumor and it affects speech production or cause nasal regurgitation during feeding. Obturator can occlude an opening such as an oro-nasal fistula and protect the defect area. Successful reconstrucion of the patient's oral cavity who have gone over the maxillectomy is a difficult task. The condition and number of teeth, the remaining support area, and the extent of the defect area have a great influence on manufacturing the obturator. If these factors are disadvantageous, the prognosis of the prosthesis is uncertain. The final obturator must have a sufficient retention in the patient's oral cavity and must not irritate the surrounding tissue and support area where the resection was performed.In this case, a 55 year old female went through the maxillectomy and the only 3 teeth remained. And the retention of the maxillary prosthesis seems to be poor. So that, we fabricated the closed hollow obturator which has reduced weight compared to the conventional obturator. Consequently the closed hollow obturator can give better sealing and the adaptation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.140-148
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• 1999

The use of obturator is the prosthetic rehabilitation approach for restoration of the defected maxillary shape and function for the patients with palatal defect. The obturator can change the shape of vocal tract and nasality, but few reports on the effects of the change were presented. So, the authors performed the experimental study to compare the difference between the sizes of vowel triangles produced by maxillectomized patients before and after obturator-wearing and to consider how much improvement in speech intelligibility can be expected by obturator wearing. The 8 patients who were totally maxillectomized due to palatal cancer were participated as subjects. They produced 5 vowels(/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/) before and after obturator-wearing. The formants of the vowels were analyzed by the spectrogram of CSL, and their speech intelligibility were judged by normal 8 listeners. As results, the frequency of the first and the second formant showed no significant difference between the articulation before and after wearing, but the comparison of the sizes of vowel triangles, related with the speech intelligibility, showed significant difference. The vowel triangle of the articulation after wearing was larger than that of the articulation before wearing. /i/ showed the lowest speech intelligibility score among the vowel articulation before wearing. After wearing obturators, their scores increased on the whole, especially, in /a/, but the intelligibility of /u/ decreased after wearing.

• The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.248-253
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• 2012

Maxillary obturator prosthesis is the most frequent treatment option for management of partial or total maxillectomy. Heavy weight of the obturators is often a dislocating factor. Hollowing the prosthesis to reduce its weight is the well established fact. The alternate technique to hollow-out the prosthesis has been described in this article which is a variation of previously described processing techniques. A pre-shaped wax-bolus was incorporated inside the flasks during packing of the heat-polymerized acrylic resin to automatically create the hollow space. The processing technique described is a single step flasking procedure to construct a closed-hollow-obturator prosthesis as a single unit. To best understand the technique, this article describes management of a patient who had undergone partial maxillectomy secondary to squamous cell carcinoma rehabilitated with a hollow-obturator prosthesis.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.319-324
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• 2017

Patients with maxillectomy defects predisposed to not only difficulty in deglutition, mastication, speech but also psychological depression from impaired facial esthetics that affect life quality. Obturator prostheses play a important role in restoring the lost form, function and the quality of life for patients with maxillectomy defects. This clinical report presents the simplified approach to predict the degree of adequate facial support by Artificial palate which reflected from a maxillary interim obturator during the stabilization period after maxillectomy.