Guidelines for a minimum acceptable protocol for the construction of complete dentures.

Area of Science:

• Dental Prosthodontics
• Evidence-Based Dentistry

Background:

• Establishing standardized prosthodontic principles for complete dentures is crucial for quality patient care.
• The
• appropriatech
• philosophy emphasizes maintaining core principles despite material and method modifications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the feasibility of achieving expert consensus on essential prosthodontic principles for complete denture construction.
• To develop a Minimum Acceptable Protocol (MAP) for complete dentures based on expert agreement.

Main Methods:

• A modified Delphi survey technique was employed with international prosthodontic experts.
• Three rounds of questionnaires with yes/no statements were used to gather consensus on denture construction stages.
• A 90% consensus threshold was set for statements to be included in the MAP.

Main Results:

• The study involved 41, 39, and 36 respondents across three Delphi survey rounds.
• Initial 75 statements were refined, resulting in 18 statements achieving 90% or greater expert agreement.
• A consensus-based Minimum Acceptable Protocol (MAP) for complete dentures was successfully derived.

Conclusions:

• The Delphi technique proved effective for obtaining expert consensus on prosthodontic principles, despite expert opinion being a lower evidence level.
• The developed MAP can serve as a benchmark for evaluating clinical techniques aiming for efficiency without compromising quality.
• This protocol supports the
• appropriatech
• philosophy in complete denture fabrication.