Quantitative Evaluation for Palatopharyngeal Closure Level on Patients with Maxillary Prostheses and The Construction of Its Data Base

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Patients having maxillary defects may show deterioration of the mouth s major functions and disorders in the speech function, the masticatory function and the swallowing function due to their maxillary defect. In order to overcome these functional losses and disorders, maxillary prostheses are ordinarily applied from a prosthetic point of view. However, because of the size of the defect part in a maxilla and the path of placement of the denture, an enough seal for the lost part is difficult to secure. Though the maxillary prostheses might provide a satisfactory level of recovery concerning the speech, masticatory and swallowing functions, air and moisture leakage to the nose are other troubles. The conventional methods, such as judging the articulation level, blowing a straw (time measurement), blowing an oboe (length) or checking the fogging status and shape on a mirror or a stainless steel pipe in front of the patient's nose, are difficult to use to evaluate the sealing level of the … More lost part in a maxilla for a maxillary prosthesis quantitatively and objectively. A method to measure a water column by inhaling has also been introduced. This method requires the handling of complicated equipment.In order to quantitatively and objectively evaluate the palatopharyngeal closure level for installing a maxillary prosthesis, I used a differential-pressure transducer and an respiratory amplifier. The variation of the intraoral pressure while blowing and sucking before and after installing a maxillary prosthesis was measured on four healthy males aged 24 to 25 and eight patients with incomplete palatopharyngeal closure caused by a partial defect of their maxilla. I used these measured data of the mouth's inside for analysis and evaluation. For our evaluation, I found that quantitative and an objective evaluation of the palatopharyngeal closure level was possible by the following procedures : 1) Obtain the maximum pressure, the stable pressure inside the mouth, as well as the stable pressure maintenance interval and the pressure attenuation time while blowing and sucking before installing a maxillary prosthesis for standard values. 2) Measure the same items as item 1) above after installing the maxillary prosthesis, and compared these values of before and after installing the maxillary prosthesis.In addition, the use of the various data concerning these patients, such as clinical records, intraoral photography, X-ray pictures, voice recordings and mandibular movement, can all be seen at once by using a multi-media personal computer. We also found that this data handling convenience offers relatively easy construction of data bases for this research. Less