Sourabh Agrawal, Roopak D. Naik, Anand K Patil, Harshavardhan Kidiyoor

ABSTRACT

Reverse pull headgear or facemask is one of the time tested methods for protraction of maxilla in growing patients. However since it is a removable appliance the treatment outcome is dependent on patient compliance which in turn is greatly influenced by the ease of wearing the appliance and minimizing the discomfort to the soft tissues while the appliance is worn. The commonly used prefabricated Petit type facemask scores low on compliance due to numerous factors namely difficulty in wearing the appliance, variations in size of chin between different age groups, sex variations and change in size and morphology of chin and forehead among different population groups. When these factors are neglected and the patient is over motivated or in other words forced by the operator to wear the appliance the patient may develop blisters on the chin and forehead due to inadaptability of the facemask. Moreover the prefabricated facemasks are expensive and are subjected to availability especially in remote areas of practice. To overcome these drawbacks we have come up with simple yet efficient way of fabricating customized Petit type facemask.