Satisfaction of the complete denture wearers related to various factors

Abstract

All dentists who have worked with complete denture wearers know that patient satisfaction is not based only on the technical quality of the dentures. The aim of this study was at assessing the effect of gender, the number of the dentures used before, the length of time of denture usage, education and age on the satisfaction of the complete denture wearers. The students of the Dental Faculty of Marmara University (Turkey) made new dentures for 342 patients who were asked to participate in the investigation. The subjects (137 men and 205 women) were 39-89 years of age with a mean of 61.62 years. The attitude toward dentures in general was measured by means of 11 items of a questionnaire. The 10 main questions of the questionnaire were answered by the participants, and quantified on a 7-point scale, while the 11th issue (general satisfaction) was evaluated on a scale of 1-10. All main factors were also estimated in subgroups. For example, the education was analyzed in 4 subgroups, the time of denture usage was divided into two subgroups (below and above 3 years) and the number of dentures used before was also taken as up to 3 or more than 3 dentures. The age of the subjects was taken in 3 subgroups: 40-55, 56-65 and >65 years. One-way ANOVA, Tukey and Student t-tests were used to evaluate the answers to the questionnaire. Our patients displayed statistically significant differences only in the topics of their ability of cleaning their dentures, due to education and number of previously used dentures. © 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.