A comparison of patient satisfaction and dentist evaluation of overdenture therapy

It has been argued that the retention of some teeth in the jaws as overdenture abutments prevents negative feelings about the loss of natural teeth. This study set out to evaluate how satisfied a group of patients were with wearing overdentures, and to compare their subjective evaluations with those of a dentist using objective criteria to examine the prostheses. A questionnaire was developed using questions adapted from several other studies. It was pretested, modified and used on all patients who were members of a longitudinal study of overdentures that started in 1974, and who returned on recall. At the end of 9 months, 101 subjects had completed the questionnaire and examination. The mean age of the patients was 65.9 years with an age range of 35 to 88 years. There were 68 men and 33 women in this study and 62 of them were satisfied with their dentures; 33 were satisfied, but felt they had some faults. Only 6 were unhappy about wearing the overdentures. The average length of time the dentures had been worn was 6.9 years, with a range of 1 to 15 years. The most frequent complaints were loss of retention (65.4%) and discomfort (62.2%) of the mandibular dentures. A number of correlations were evaluated and some significant relationships were found between dentist and patient evaluation of the dentures. The best predictor of patient satisfaction with denture wearing was the patient's perception of retention and appearance. In the maxilla the patient's ability to chew and the dentist's evaluation of occlusion were also significant predictors. In the mandible the only other factors apart from retention and appearance were patient comfort and age.