Silicone elastomers prostheses

The tensile strength of the silicone elastomer ensures an overall strength of the material. Moreover, a high elongation at break is desirable, especially when peeling a nasal or eye prosthesis from the facial tissue. 

Keywords Silicone elastomer, polydimethyl siloxane, facial prosthesis, epithesis, facial prosthetics, anaplastology... 

Chlorinated polyethylene elastomer (CPE) is one of the alternatives of the PDMS. Extraoral maxillofacial prostheses have been fabricated with silicone elastomer for 50 years, with few improvements. A controlled, randomized, prospective, double-blind, single-crossover, multicenter, phase 111 clinical trial was performed by Kiat-Amnuay et al. to determine the noninferiority of CPE to silicone elastomer [46]. For this purpose, 42 patients were randomly assigned to wear a custom-made prosthesis fabricated from both materials for four months and asked to rate their satisfaction (0 = not satisfied, 10 = completely satisfied). Of the 28 patients who completed the study, 68% had used silicone prostheses previously. Overall, patients rated the silicone prosthesis higher than CPE (difference 2.2, 95% confidence interval [Cl] 0.9 to 3.6, P =. 017). Previous users had a stronger preference for silicone (difference 3.3, 95% Cl 1.7 to 4.9, P =... 

It has been estimated that two million American women have undergone breast augmentation or reconstruction since the introduction of the silicone gel-filled elastomer envelope-type prosthesis in the early 1960s [60,61]. The reported cases of systemic sclerosis among this population raise the important question of whether the association between systemic sclerosis and silicone breast implants is a real one. Unfortunately, almost all of the evidence to date is derived from case reports, which are the... 

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