**6. Conclusion**

Color matched maxillofacial prosthesis was fabricated using Z-Corp 510 color printer utilizing starch based biocompatible materials. According to the mechanical properties, the prosthesis should be replaced in a range of 6–12 months. The prosthesis could be used as interim prosthesis special after surgery while the patient is going through healing period. Furthermore the prosthesis could be used as definitive prostheses by compensating the draw back in the mechanical properties by taking the great advantages of this great technology that having the ability of printing several copies of the prosthesis at the time of printing at lower cost and rapid manufacturing of anatomically more accurate parts compared to handmade prostheses and applying more comfortable methods of data capturing, designing and manufacturing.

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**Author details**

Faraedon M. Zardawi1

1 University of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq

2 University of Leeds, United Kingdom

\*Address all correspondence to: k.xiao1@leeds.ac.uk

provided the original work is properly cited.

*Optimization of Maxillofacial Prosthesis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85034*

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

\*

and Kaida Xiao2

*Optimization of Maxillofacial Prosthesis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85034*

*Prosthesis*

the patients as shown in (**Figure 14**).

**6. Conclusion**

and manufacturing.

defect [28]. Finally we believe that the many limitations of handmade prostheses regarding esthetics, high prosthesis cost, time, effort, hectic impression techniques and problems of retention plus high technical skill required for fabrication by anaplastologist could be generally reduced and consequently minimizing the social and psychological challenges that often-maxillofacial patients encountered in life. At this stage, a fully computerized customized prosthesis is manufactured, using biocompatible materials [49]. The prosthesis matching the patient's skin color and having skin-like texture with accurate anatomical details of the patient, possessing a light weight with controlled thickness of the prosthesis that is well appreciated by

Despite the many advantages of this technology in constructing soft tissue facial

Color matched maxillofacial prosthesis was fabricated using Z-Corp 510 color printer utilizing starch based biocompatible materials. According to the mechanical properties, the prosthesis should be replaced in a range of 6–12 months. The prosthesis could be used as interim prosthesis special after surgery while the patient is going through healing period. Furthermore the prosthesis could be used as definitive prostheses by compensating the draw back in the mechanical properties by taking the great advantages of this great technology that having the ability of printing several copies of the prosthesis at the time of printing at lower cost and rapid manufacturing of anatomically more accurate parts compared to handmade prostheses and applying more comfortable methods of data capturing, designing

prostheses, there were few limitations compared to handmade—conventional method of fabrication. These limitations were related to the mechanical properties of the final product [50]. The mechanical tests shows drawback in the mechanical properties, however, it is hard to judge how poorly that will affect the prosthesis on the patient; the only real way of testing mechanical and optical durability is when the prostheses test on the patients during the service life of the prosthesis. As the project was at the experimental stage of development it wasn't possible to perform these tests on patients [28]. More work should be done to determine how long the prostheses would last. So far it is obvious that the prostheses done need to be replaced regularly. Further investigations should be done on the printing materials in order to improve the mechanical properties and durability of the prostheses and to achieve optimal advantages of time compression technology and rapid prototyp-

ing for simple, full automated fabrication of facial prostheses.

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