Oral health-related quality of life: acrylic versus flexible partial dentures

Background: Teeth lost are usually replaced by all-acrylic removable partial dentures (RPD) because of its affordability and ease of fabrication. The all-acrylic RPD is said to cause significant periodontal injury and consequently affect the oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) of denture wearers.Objective: To determine and compare OHRQoL of all-acrylic and flexible RPD wearers at baseline and after use of dentures.Design and setting: Study was quasi-experimental using a cross-over design, involving 30 patients with Kennedy class IV and anterior class III arches. Patient recruitment and review were done over an eight-month period in the Prosthetic Unit of a tertiary health facility. OHRQoL was assessed with the oral health impact profile-14 questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive and multivariate analysis at asignificant level of p <.05.Results: Mean age of patients was 33.8 ±10.0 years; at baseline, patient reported occasionally, fairly often or very often for 11(78.6%) OHIP items. However, after using the acrylic and flexible partial dentures, 11(36.6%) patients reported having trouble pronouncing words and 9(30.0%) found it uncomfortable to eat respectively. At baseline,there was a difference in mean OHIP scores with age (p=.02); scores reduced from 12.4 ± 9.8 to 4.8±5.3 (CI= 3.3–12.0, p=.001) after using the all-acrylic denture and 3.8±5.6 (CI= 4.3–13.0, p<.001) with the flexible denture.Conclusion: There was improvement in the OHRQoL of patients with use of flexible partial dentures. Therefore, thermoplastic materials are possible alternative RPD base materials in patient management.Keywords: OHIP-14, Removable partial dentures, Quality of Life, acrylic dentures, flexible denturesFunding: None declare

An audit of post-retained crown restorations in a University teaching hospital, Nigeria: a ten-year review

Aim: To review the pattern of failure and the associated factors of the post retained restorations done over ten years.Method: A retrospective cross-sectional study, which audited the record of post-retained restorations. Data including biodata, tooth type, post type, post size, luting cement, and failure were extracted and analyzed. Statistical significance was set at p value ≤0.05. Results: There were 210 participants (M=106, F=104). Stainless steel para posts mainly were used (91.8%); with size three (3) being the highest (23.8%) recorded. Dual cure composite was mainly (78.1%) used for the post cementation. There were 27 (12.8%) cases of failure of post retained restorations of which post-fracture combined with post and crown dislodgement had the highest (52%), with the tooth fracture being the least reported (14.8%). Post fracture only was commoner in males (66.7%). The majority (81.5%) of the failure was seen in the para post group, with no tooth fracture reported for the fibre post. Conclusion: Post and core placement is a common procedure for restoring endodontically treated teeth with a reduced coronal structure for the main purpose of retaining the core and, ultimately, the restoration. Stainless steel post was the commonest used, and post-fracture combined with dislodgement of post and crown constituted the most prevalent failure reported