I was walking through the removable department the other day and saw some some restorations
some partials that I hadn't seen before and it was kind of interesting so I stopped and took a
look at it and had one of the technicians show me a new material that we have here at the laboratory
this is called reflex this is a material that I think we're the only lab that's gonna that that
is producing these reflex type partials and it's interesting because there's finally a competitor
to Val Plast and a lot of dentists really like the idea of a flexible a partial something that's
going to be a little easier for a patient to wear maybe a little easier to make to fabricate than a
typical cast partial and so as you look at this the first thing that you'll notice is the clasps
of course are all the same gingival color it's a little easier to see when I take it off of
here and so the clasps are that same kind of color in fact they almost get a little bit translucent
because they're a little bit thinner and you can see that because of the strength of this material
that the entire pallet does not even need to be covered and you'll see that a little bit more
of some of the other restorations that we look at but you can see that we're not covering the entire
pallet just about the anterior third and one of the other interesting features is what this does
when it's placed into warm water so I'm going to drop this in here real quick it might be a little
more than warm in case you hear me scream in just a minute when I pick it up some other advantages
is that there's no methyl methacrylate in this material so it's non allergenic and unlike some of
the nylon based flexible partials like valve Plast this one the reflex can actually be realigned and
so if you need to do a realign you can go ahead and do the realign impression in your office you
would send it back to us here at the lab and then we would go ahead and realign it for you and it
can be repaired as well if something happens and the patient breaks part of it off that actually
is pretty hot so I'm just going to take this out with the the forceps and you'll see how all of a
sudden it becomes completely flexible I mean I can't think of another material we have that's
quite this flexible for a for a partial like this and you know you can see basically it waves back
and forth and so there's lots of different ways where you can actually bend this and then take
it into the patient's mouth you know well it's still soft if you want to be able to see it a
little bit more and have it adapt itself to the patient's tissue so that's one of the neat things
is that in that little medium hot water I would say to hot water you'll know what you're able to
grab onto and you can hear it click as it snaps down so the more interproximal under cuts we have
the better that something like this is going to work and so we have the six natural teeth there
and then we have our class our gingival coloured clasp on the two cuspids and then it clasps both
of the molars as well and so we have something were to get bent or even before you deliver to
the patient the first time softening it up in the water first and dropping it into their mouth and
letting those clasps really adapt to the undercuts in those teeth is a nice way to do it so besides
just something like this you know we could also do a modification where we've got the same type of
thing but maybe we have somebody who I don't know likes the the feel of the open palate because they
had it on a previous denture so you can do that you know so the two choices really are cover the
anterior third or you can do a palatal strap and leave the inside open if you prefer that and if I
think it was me I would probably go with something like that design and stay on the anterior third
and those are pretty traditional but we're able to start doing more things with this that we haven't
been able to do with other flexible partials and that includes like a single tooth Nesbit like this
where we've just got that one tooth there and we've got again the two gingival clasps on the
facial and actually there's a couple little rest preps on the back of those two teeth just to keep
it from over seating into the tissue and that's a really nice way to be able to do that without
having to cover the whole palatal tissue typically on a regular flipper obviously we're going to have
acrylic across the entire pallet and so this is a nice conservative way you have to decide how
nervous you are about the patient's swallowing or inhaling that restoration but most of the
time you know it's the patients who are kind of asking us for the nez but I'm just missing one
tooth why do I need this whole other part of the appliance that goes all over my mouth and this is
another interesting one here with this cuspid this missing cuspid so it's here and again you
can see we've got a clasp on the distal of the first by and again all we need to do is engage
just a little bit of the interproximal undercut here between the central and the lateral and then
wrap around the lingual of that first bicuspid and that's a pretty elegant way you know maybe
we just placed an implant here that we're waiting for it to integrate or maybe we just placed a bone
graft and we're waiting for that or maybe the patient can't afford the implant now but might
be able to do it in a couple of years what a neat little way to replace that single tooth
as opposed to maybe you know a Maryland bridge which could be bond and fall out and and because
this was put into an extraction site it almost looks like an ovate ponic so you could of course
create an ovate Pontic site on your own and then make something like that partial to go
in there or even these teeth over on this side patient who can't afford a bridge yet in that
area or might not be able to afford it at all what a nice little way to be able to go in and
you can see the full wraparound on that distal molar almost comes into the aesthetic zone but
not quite not that that's you know going to be in the aesthetic zone on a second molar unless
it's Julia Roberts perhaps I'd have to go look at some pictures of her but I recall seeing her
second molars last time she smiled as well but you can see a minimal amount of material over here on
the lingual as well again just engaging a couple undercuts between the cuspid the lateral and the
central and so we end up with a really nice result here in a really easy way and again a way where we
can drop it into some hot water and then put it into the patient's mouth and let it adapt itself
to the patient's tissues so interestingly enough it's actually a modified composite resin it's not
a nylon base material but it is thermo active so when you drop it into the water we're able
to bend it move things around it comes in a couple different shades although the pink that that you
see here is certainly the universal shade and seems to match almost everybody it can be used
with a metal partial framework if you still like the idea of the strength of the metal and you
want to enhance the aesthetics a little bit with this material you can definitely do that and so as
you've seen almost any design will work whether it's a horseshoe a palatal strap unilateral 's
you can do full pallets with it if you want to or if the patient doesn't care so again this is the
reflex material it's just being added onto our our X forms right now so you may not see it if
you see this today and go to order one of these tomorrow but you can just write reflex re F lax
not to be confused with reflux and our removable partial Department will know what you're talking
about so reflex looks to be a great new way a great new flexible partial for people who
don't want the weight and expense perhaps of a conventional partial and they want a more
aesthetic solution where we can hide the clasps a little bit more because they're not only gingiva
colored but in the case of a tooth placement like this by engaging enough of the lingual undercuts
and wrapping around a tooth we can avoid any kind of facial clasp on the lateral incisor
you