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Treatment outcomes with removable partial dentures: a comparison between patient and prosthodontist assessments
1Department of Prosthodontics, School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb, Gundulićeva 5, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. dkz@email.hinet.hr
Purpose:
This article presents the results from a survey of patients' degree of satisfaction with their removable partial dentures (RPD) and the comparison between patient and prosthodontist assessments.
Materials And Methods:
A total of 165 experienced RPD wearers filled in a questionnaire and graded their RPDs depending on their level of satisfaction. A scale ranging from 1 to 5 was used to assess general satisfaction with RPDs and to assess their esthetics, retention, and hygiene. A specialist in prosthodontics assessed the same prostheses using the same scale, not knowing the patient's opinion.
Results:
The patients' assessments were high, and more than half of them graded their dentures as excellent. On average, all variables were assessed higher by the patients than by the prosthodontist (P < .001). For the patients who gave the worst grades to their dentures, the grades were lower than the prosthodontist's (P < .001), while the satisfied patients graded their dentures much better than did the prosthodontist (P < .001).
Conclusion:
On average, patient assessment of the treatment outcomes with RPDs was less critical than prosthodontist assessment. However, the few dissatisfied patients assessed their dentures worse than did the prosthodontist.