Miniature Passive Device for Locating Lost Dentures in Care Facilities

Project Summary Abstract For the million Americans primarily older adults with no remaining natural teeth and million with at least one tooth missing the use of removable dentures can have many benefits including improved mastication nutritional intake speech and appearance as well as social interaction and emotional confidence Conversely misplacing or losing dentures can have significant detrimental effects including reduced oral functional status high replacement cost emotional stress and frustration Denture use is a complex learned skill and wearers are often unable to easily adapt to replacement dentures especially if they have worn previous ones for many years or have disorders affecting neuromuscular function such as dementia stroke or Parkinsonandapos s disease among others Caregivers in long term care facilities and hospitals commonly report episodes of lost dentures due to the high prevalence of patient disability and dependency on caregivers who may be unfamiliar with managing dental prostheses When dentures are lost often after being removed and placed on meal trays in napkins or tissues or in the laundry caregivers and facilities are directly blamed for the loss by the patients and their families While families may ultimately be financially responsible for replacing the dentures these frequent scenarios create immense emotional frustration and potential conflict for all parties involved Many tagging and location technologies for simple objects e g keys are now available but frequently require power and recharging which poses a risk for dentures inside a patientandapos s mouth Therefore there exists an unmet need to support denture wearing adults especially older adults and their caregivers by providing a safe passive low cost rapid and highly effective lost denture locating system to successfully locate and recover the prostheses ASTER Labs Inc proposes to construct a novel fully embedded miniature and safe locating solution using an antenna that is tuned to respond to a specific frequency fully passive requires no power inside the denture itself and is easily enclosed in the denture base substrate The lost dentureandapos s antenna is located via a small handheld detector that is operated by the caregiver The detector operates using low frequency radio wave harmonic reflection and multiplication techniques The handheld detector unit is accompanied by a user friendly smartphone mobile application to guide and assist the caregiver in quickly and efficiently searching for and locating the lost denture The goal is to increase success rates of locating lost dentures while giving denture wearers families and staff at care facilities and hospitals the confidence and peace of mind that these important prostheses can be located if lost thus minimizing the financial physical and emotional consequences of fabricating and adapting to new dental prostheses The system design will adhere to multiple safety specifications and regulations to ensure patient health and well being By providing the denture wearing population and caregivers a novel technically advanced and practical locating system older adults can be assured of regular availability and use of their personal dentures Project Narrative Increasingly frequent and common occurrences of misplaced and lost dentures in both private homes and care facilities have significant implications for the wearer and caregiver in terms of oral health impact cost and emotional stress In addition to neuromuscular associations being lost from an original prosthesis emotional frustration conflict and financial expense often arise due to lost usage time for both patients and caregivers The proposed research seeks to reduce lost usage time or need for a replacement by developing a highly effective easy to use and safe denture locating system to provide on demand in home or in facility capabilities to successfully recover lost dentures