Retention and Quality of life of Different manufacturing techniques of palatal obturator for acquired palatal defect in treatment of post COVID-19 Associated Mucormycosis (CAM)

Abstract

Introduction:In Egypt mucormycosis post COVID-19 recovery affected mainly patients on steroid therapy & uncontrolled diabetes .Maxillary defect after fungal deprinment required a proper prosthetic rehabilitation with properly designed obturator which can be assessed by obturator function scale The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of life and retention evaluation of two different manufacturing techniques of palatal obturator for acquired palatal defect in treatment of post COVID-19 Associated Mucormycosis (CAM)Materials and methods: For each of twelve patients enrolled in this study, two CoCr alloy frameworks were constructed by two different manufacturing techniques: conventional lost wax tech (group I) and selective laser melting printing technique SLM (group II). Retention was evaluated for both obturators at delivery using digital force gauge. Patient satisfaction was evaluated for both groups after 1 month usage of each obturator with two weeks gap in between by Obturator Functioning Scale (OFS). Data were collected & statistically analyzed to compare both groups by independent t-test, the p-value was considered significant at the level of <0.05. Results:The two studied groups showed statistically insignificant difference in retention but highly statistically significant in OFS where group (II) showed high improvement in obturation function with 100%-75% than group (I) . Conclusion:The (SLM) for fabrication of palatal obturator of acquired palatal defect in treatment of post (CAM) provided a better quality of life than those fabricated with conventional lost wax technique. Retention of obturator fabricated with SLM showed no difference from those fabricated with conventional lost wax technique