Digital workflow for the intraoral removable prosthesis of head and neck cancer

OBJECTIVESObturator prostheses and remov-able prostheses still represent a valid option in head and neck can-cer patients. The aim of the present article is to briefly review the current literature about the use of a digital workflow in the intraoral prosthetic rehabilitation of head and neck cancer patients.MATERIALS AND METHODSThe review included articles in En-glish published from January 2010 to December 2021. Articles re-garding patients who had under-gone head and neck cancer treat-ment and intraoral prosthetic reha-bilitation by a CAD/CAM tech-niques in at least 1 of the prosthetic treatment stages (scanning, de-sign, and/or fabrication) were included.RESULTSThirteen articles with 66 described patients met the inclusion criteria and were included. Three types of removable prosthetic treatments were reported: 47 maxillary obtu-rators, 18 provisional maxillary ob-turators, and 1 maxillary complete denture. As for 3-dimensional im-age capture, the most common method was intraoral scanner, fol-lowed by conventional CT scan. As for prosthetic procedures, all treatments incorporated at least a digital workflow in one of the stag-es, either in design or fabrication. Concerning the CAM phase, de-finitive cast printing was per-formed in 64 patients. Only 1 pa-tient was rehabilitated by using a completely digital workflow.CONCLUSIONSA completely digital workflow was rarely used in the intraoral pros-thetic rehabilitation of patients with head and neck cancer. Com-pared to a conventional impres-sion, intraoral digital scanning can save time and steps for dentists and technicians, thus avoiding in the dental office tray selection, material dispensing, material set-ting, material disinfection, and im-pression packaging and shipping. On the other hand, at the lab plaster, pouring, die cutting, trimming, articulation, and extraoral scan-ning are no longer necessary.CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCEThe reduced laboratory working time, the avoidance of the risk of aspiration of impression materi-als, and the possibility of perform-ing an adequate digital impression in spite of the trismus are import-ant advantages associated with the digital workflow.