Cost-effective, expedient, and time-saving surface texturing technique for facial prostheses

Figure 1. Fine sand and white polysynthetic resin adhesive glue. The basic requirements of making a prosthesis indiscernible to the casual observer are natural contours, surface texture, color, and translucency. Lack of attention to any of these factors may result in an unnatural looking prosthesis. For a maxillofacial prosthesis to appear realistic, the surface texture of the skin needs to be faithfully reproduced. Conventionally, this is accomplished in the wax pattern by pressing a wet gauze into the softened wax or using a toothbrush to produce a stippled skin texture in the prosthesis. However, both of these techniques are time consuming, and, owing to the hydrophobic characteristics of the wax, surface details like skin pores may not be precisely transferred to the cast, even if they are made sharper and more accentuated than the patient’s natural skin. Recently, an antiskid epoxy resin was applied to the surface of the definitive mold to give porous skin texture to the silicone elastomer in the polymerization stage. However, antiskid epoxy resin is expensive and may not be easily and universally available. This article, therefore, describes a technique for producing surface texture with fine sand mixed in white polysynthetic resin adhesive glue. This can be easily applied to the surface of the definitive mold before pouring the maxillofacial silicone elastomeric material. It is a cost-effective, expedient, and time-saving technique which effectively overcomes the disadvantages of all the techniques that have been documented in the literature.