دراسة العلاقة بين المقاييس السريرية لجودة الاجهزة الكاملة وبين تقبل المرضى لهذه الاجهزة

Background& Objective: Prosthodontists always do their best in order to make dentures that fulfill all the functional and esthetic requirements of the patients. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between patients’ satisfaction with traditional complete dentures and clinical measures of denture quality, which include clinical assessment of retention, stability, support, occlusion, esthetics and speech. Materials & Methods: 104 patients participated in our study (65 males, 39 females). The range of their ages was (40 – 78) years (median=60.9). Traditional complete dentures were made for all these patients, and then they were followed for 4-6 weeks. After that, a questionnaire was filled for each patient. This questionnaire includes questions about patient satisfaction and assessment of the new denture. The clinical measures of quality of the denture were also assessed by a prosthodontist. Results: The results of this study showed that there was a poor significant relationship between patients’ rating of the retention of their dentures and the clinical measures of retention, stabililty and support (r<0.04). At each of the surveyed situations, the patient considered their dentures better than the examiner did (P<0.05). There was also a poor, significant relationship between the accuracy of reproduction of centric relation and the patient ability to masticate with his denture(r=0.27). Conclusion: Within the limits of this study, it can be concluded that clinical measures of denture quality affect the retention of the denture as perceived by the patient. They also affect the comfort of the patient during mastication. For that, the dentist must always do his best to make dentures with enhanced quality. On the other hand, clinical measures of quality are not the only factor that affects the patient satisfaction with denture