Jaw Tracking/BioJVA

Dr. Steven Olmos shows the demonstration of the tracking the affect of the Aqualizer® on the jaw joint using the jaw tracker.

DR. STEVEN OLMOS: What we're demonstrating now is the tracking using the bioresearch equipment here, Jaw Tracker of the mandible in space. There is a magnet that is attached to the lower anterior teeth and we are going to track it through about 200 sensors, right and left, and so, as the mandible moves in space, this is transmitting that information to the computer. In addition to doing that, we have sensors over the jaw joints to discern the vibrations in tissue, whether or not these disk tissue in the jaw joint, the soft tissue, the supporting structure is in place, whether it's perforated through, has a hole in it, and whether or not the bones of the lower jaw, the condyle meeting the skull is touching each other. In normal joint movement, we do not want bones to touch each other, and so, we can discern if that process is happening, exactly where in movement that's occurring, and we can see the difference between jaw movement. Jaw movement is determined by muscles, so if muscles have different tension on them, based on the amount of pain and the amount of activity from the brain causing this tension. So we have been using an Aqualizer, as you can see with this piece of floss here that has been decompressing the jaw joint, pulling the condyle away from the skull, that's stopping the pain to the brain, that's causing the muscles to relax, and we're going to see the net effect on jaw movement now. Okay? So are you ready? FEMALE VOICE 2: - - open as wide as you can, - - , as wide as you can, - - , wide, - - , wide, - - , wide, - - , wide, - - . DR. STEVEN OLMOS: Okay. And now, we have a graphic representation of the recording that we just produced. The top line is the recording from the sensors over the jaw joint for the right and the left jaw. The green line here is tracking the magnet or the mandible as it opens and closes. The yellow line here is the sideways movement of the jaw. Is the jaw, as it's opening, is it staying on a center line, or is, as it's opening, is it deflecting or deviating off midline? We're tracking all of these measurements and seeing a difference in the wavelength between how the jaw works, so we can compare before and after. What we're seeing from this is--can you go into the review mode? So now, we'll place this from the data collection mode into the review mode, and now, we have a comparison. This, right here, this graphic is showing us whether or not the person is in line if they're opening in a straight pattern. This is showing us that there's only about a .5 millimeter difference on opening after using the Aqualizer, and if we look at the vibrations here, can we go ahead and blow those up? The vibrations meaning that the disk tissue being displaced in the jaw joint, let's see if that's different. These are the graphs of both left and right jaw joints. This energy below this dotted line, 300 hertz, so from 0 to 300 hertz are the vibrations that soft tissue makes, the disk tissue, the articulating tissue. The vibrations from this dotted line out, 300 and over, are bone on bone grinding. We do not want to see bone on bone grinding. That's a very pathologic situation. This is a good representation of normal, where we have tissue movement, so we know that they're in place and no or very little - - . Now, we're going to compare to the vibrations that were taken prior to the insertion of the Aqualizer. What we have here is a big bump right over here. This is in the - - range on the left hand side, so prior to the insertion of the Aqualizer, the jaw joint was poking through the tissue and bones were rubbing on each other, which is a very, very inflammatory situation and we were able to change that, reduce that, with just this simple little device for a period of time. Now, we'll know that if we were to hold these positions in a more stable way for a chronic patient, we may even be able to generate and restore that pathology, close out that perforation in the disk, and have a more long term, therapeutic benefit for this patient.