A Soft Actuated Mouth Exercising Device for Oral Physiotherapy for OSF Patients.

Abstract

Oral Submucous Fibrosis and Tt!mporomandibular joint are common diseases identified among most South Asians and it has a trend of spreading the same throughout Europe. The opening of the oral cavity becomes difficult or limited the all the activities of the mouth when suffering from such diseases and oral physiotherapy has been used to treat such with the surgical treatments depending on the situation. Various mouth exercising devices developed for oral physiotherapy are inefficient and did not effectively address the patient's mouth shape, jaw opening biodynamics and comfortability when using for a longer time. A soft actuated device was proposed and designed to eliminate such problems by taking jaw dynamics (movements and forces), shapes of the oral cavity into account. This device consists of a pair of soft actuators that will be placed inside the oral cavity between the stationary upper jaw and the movable lower jaw of the mandible. The lowering push is determined by taking the estimation data of the jaw opening forces for men and women and thereby required pressure to operate the device is obtained also by considering the safety factor, service factor of the operation and elastomer properties of the medical grade soft materials. The required pressure to operate the device is provided using a hand bole with a valve. Lab experiments show that the device is in proper working condition and can withstand for such a pressure when operating continuous up­down motion. 0SF and TMJ disorder patients will be benefitted by this work.