Comminution of food with mandibular implant-retained overdentures

When complete-denture wearers are treated with from four to six implants and mandibular implant-borne prostheses, masticatory performance improves. No significant improvement has been observed with two implants and implant-mucosa-borne overdentures, suggesting that the masticatory performance of edentulous subjects depends on the degree of support for their mandibular prostheses by implants or alveolar mucosa. To verify this hypothesis, we studied, in a randomized clinical trial, the comminution of an artificial test food during mastication. The trial involved the provision of a new maxillary denture and either a new conventional mandibular denture, a mandibular overdenture retained by two permucosal cylindric implants through a single bar-clip attachment, or a mandibular overdenture retained by a transmandibular implant through five clips on a triple-bar construction with cantilever extensions. In comparison with the subjects wearing mandibular implant-retained overdentures, the subjects with conventional complete dentures needed between 1.5 and 3.6 times more chewing strokes to achieve an equivalent reduction in particle size. No differences in masticatory performance and efficiency were found between the subjects who had received two permucosal cylindric implants and those who had received a transmandibular implant. The results suggest that the increased retention and stability of the mandibular denture, rather than the degree of support by implants or alveolar mucosa, determine the wearer's ability to comminute food during mastication.