Patient satisfaction with complete dentures fabricated using two neutral zone techniques: a within-subject cross-over...

Area of Science:

• Dental prosthetics
• Oral rehabilitation
• Biomaterials in dentistry

Background:

• Conventional complete dentures often lead to patient dissatisfaction.
• Neutral zone (NZ) techniques offer potential improvements but require further comparative analysis.
• Specific NZ techniques, swallowing (SNZ) and phonetic (PNZ), lack direct patient satisfaction comparisons.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare patient satisfaction between complete dentures fabricated using swallowing neutral zone (SNZ) and phonetic neutral zone (PNZ) techniques.
• To compare the bucco-lingual dimensions of neutral zone records obtained from SNZ and PNZ techniques.

Main Methods:

• Ten completely edentulous subjects dissatisfied with existing dentures participated.
• Subjects received both SNZ and PNZ dentures sequentially, fabricated using tissue conditioner for recording.
• Patient satisfaction was assessed via questionnaire after 2 months of use for each prosthesis type; statistical analysis used Student t test and Mann-Whitney tests (p < 0.05).

Main Results:

• No statistically significant difference in patient satisfaction was found between SNZ and PNZ complete dentures across all assessed variables.
• Both SNZ and PNZ dentures showed statistically significant improvements in satisfaction compared to patients' old dentures for most variables.
• The bucco-lingual dimensions of SNZ and PNZ neutral zone records were statistically similar, except in the maxillary left premolar region.

Conclusions:

• Patient satisfaction with complete dentures fabricated using the SNZ technique is comparable to that of the PNZ technique.
• Both SNZ and PNZ techniques offer significant improvements in patient satisfaction over existing dentures.
• SNZ dentures were preferred for esthetics, stability, comfort, and chewing, while speech preferences were mixed.