The Use of Tongue Depressors instead of Oral Splints in the Treatment of Patients with Perioral Burns

Abstract

Face is one the most injured part of the body after burn injuries. Facial burns due to electrical insults, caustic agents, flame and even hot liquids can cause peri-oral scar and mouth contracture named as microstomia. One of the most important action of the physical therapist for prevention of microstomy is usage of oral splints. These splints apply continuous traction in mouth in all directions that prevent contracture. Many kinds of splints are available. Their manufacturing is time consuming and expensive. They are made from metals or silicone or other components. We used tongue blade as a good tongue splint. We insert one end of tongue blades into the mouth between the teeth and cheeks to the level of sixth tooth posteriorly in both sides. As both sides of jaws and teeth ore more closer to each other frack to front the exterior ends of tongue blades will touch each other. This angled semi fixed position of tongue blades applies outward traction on mouth and works as an oral splint. Mouth splints are expensive and not available for everyone. Otherwise as these aren't disposable, repeated cleaning of them is very important. We used tongue blade as a mouth splint. Advantages of this device is its lightweight, very low cost, disposability and being healthy. It's very easy to use. So we recommend tongue blade as a simple, disposable, cheap, light, effective and available device for prevention of mouth contracture and microstomy.

Keywords

• burn
• contracture
• oral
• scar
• splint