Impression on

Denture Innovation*

By

"Brain-Le-Dent'e" .Dr. Alex Samuel,

Parapatt, No: 79,5th Cross, Mallappa Layout, Babusapalya, Bangalore-560043.

By this innovation I get the satisfaction of doing something for the edentulous patients by giving them utmost user satisfaction. The world over my peers from the dental fraternity will benefit from this innovation in Oral Rehabilitation. My idea will give a newer dimension to dentistry in delivering high-end precision dentures without errors & repetition

Imagine a scenario where by adapting it into a universal data base & also

incorporating a biometric identification. Will bring about revolution in the dental office where the patient just walks in once to give his oral land marks and a denture will be delivered at home with the instruction to use.

Artificial Denture or Dental Prosthesis is a bio mechanical device which aids in not only in eating but forms an important psychological tool by improving appearance.

I would like to put my thoughts to action by giving not just giving patients teeth to eat. In my career pathway I haven't seen anyone thinking unique or Out of the Box or unconventional. All have the pressure of their mentors and guides to finish the prescribed course curriculum within the stipulated timeframe that there is no scope for unconventional rational thoughts and research activities. There are qualifying papers even at master's level exit exams.

They are all to practice what they have studied with no time to research. This has for long been the conventional approach of Dental school graduates.

My otherwise relatively uneventful life in the dental school was interspersed with a bit of spice by small doses of technology. Way back in my second year of dental school (1996-97) technology was happening and it was difficult not to be a part of the sea change. Computers and internet were taking off on a large scale and most of my other entrepreneur friends joined the dotcom bandwagon. I helped them out by assembling customized machines based on their needs. The skills improved by and large through experimentation and by interacting with peers via forums. That was when I realized the need for customization and the importance of 24 x 7 availability. Not to mention, this also earned me a bit of pocket money that was reinvested in making bigger and better machines for me.

"Preclinical Prostodontics" was the subject that actually set the wheels of imagination in motion. Unfortunately our kind of education system does not have dedicated counsellors to analyze your ideas and to give you the right feedback on feasibility of projects else my ideas would perhaps been materialized long back.

The science of making dentures is a very unsophisticated, tedious and sometimes a very inaccurate approach. This led to many repetitions, no control over precision and less of customization. The artificial set of teeth available off the shelves have to be modified to suit the patients, leading to frequent errors in tooth and gum colour, tooth size & shape. This is fell is because the landmarks are recorded in one sitting which may not mimic the patients actual biological movements. Also fatigue may set in and may cause the patient to make errors in jaw relation and bite recording, the size and shape and colour of the teeth are then again dictated by the dentist and not wholly by what the patient wants. This issue of aesthetics has been woefully unaddressed by the dental surgeon and the issue of poor aesthetics have been brushed under the carpet of better functionality most of the times.

Scenarios like the same dentist given two different qualities of dentures to the same patient have not been uncommon. After some years when the dentures wear off, an old client who was once satisfied with the fist denture may not be happy with the second denture he receives from the same dentist. The reason I feel is because the dentist does not do the teeth alignment himself for the lack of time, when he ought to have done it himself because he is the one who has see and analyzed the patient's oral functional physiology. But the important task of alignment of teeth has been left to the hands of dental technicians.

The science of denture making is largely dependent on the art of teeth setting. Even a very skilled and an experienced technician constructs dentures in an hurry sometimes and is very possibly influenced by mood swings just as any human and as we all know too well any art is influenced by the frame of mind.

We have a new set of problems when dealing with the current generation of adventurous geriatric Patients. Patients afflicted with Alzheimer's, Dementia, Stroke and other such age related problems misplace or come back with a broken denture. Every time a denture is made, he is not comfortable using them for quite some time because the oral cavity follows a very slow adaption curve to any new foreign object. A biomechanical device that varies every time a new one is fabricated would not be of any help to the client and would only compound his existing problems.

A biomechanical device that is capable of being replicated to the exact millimetre every time it is fabricated would be of immense help. Purists may argue that this is very similar to taking a print from a printer every time there is a need. I feel that, it the whole idea of making a template that can then be customized very quickly and scientifically to my satisfaction and to the patient's content. A healthy amalgamation of the sciences of oral biology, maxillofacial imaging, biomaterial design, database warehousing coupled with easy record retrieval, and an intuitive software customisable software interface which is easy for both the patient and the dental surgeon would be a way of describing my intended body of work.

With Globalspec currently into bio medical sciences would be willing to collaborate with me and help me execute my ideas.

Globalspec Research I think would provide an ideal setting in terms of accessibility to state of the art software technology, other resources & good volumes of patients would be the best viable option for implementing my INNOVATION.

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