Properties and characteristics of foam denture cleaners as denture adhesive removers

The need for denture adhesives is increasing worldwide, but few denture-care products target denture adhesive users. Foam denture cleaners have been recently marketed to assist brush denture cleaning, but there is a lack of objective evaluation. In this study, we compared the detergency of denture adhesives using six commercial foam-denture cleaners. For removing the adhesives, most of the tested cleaners were effective in immersion experiments, and three cleaners were more effective in the denture cleaning experiment compared to control water. However, only one could effectively remove the slime that is derived from the adhesive and detergency of artificial dirt. The surface roughnesses of the denture base and the relining material revealed that prolonged immersion in some cleaners could be affected. The results suggest that different commercial foam denture cleaners have different detergency levels, and that some cleaners may affect the properties of denture materials upon long-term use.