Abstract
It was the purpose of this study to estimate the long-term clinical effects of wearing partial dentures of the various types.Six months to five and a half years follow-up was undertaken on 2149 dentures with which 1564 patients were fitted at Tokyo Medical and Dental University. They comprised 908 maxillary and 1210 mandibular dentures. According to the denture materials they were divided into 853 dentures made of cast cobalt-chromium or gold alloy skeleton with acrylic resin saddles and 1238 in acrylic resin with clasps and bars in wrought metal.Eight hundred and seventy eight appliances of them were provided for men and 1222 provided for women.
Clinical examinations were performed at the time when the dentures were inserted. Six months to five and a half years thereafter a questionnaire was sent to each case in order to ask chiefly the question which dentures had, or had not, been worn, and the re-examination was carried out.1158 cases (53.89 percent) replied to the questionnaries, and 772 of them (35.92 percent) attended for the reexamination.But 655 cases (30.48 percent) did not reply, and 336 cases (15.64 percent) were untraceable.
The responses were obtained only from about a half of patients, and therefore it may be questioned that a series of cases responding to the survey did not differ from the whole in the distribution according to, for example, age, sex, denture materials, denture types, maxillary and mandibular dentures, number of remaining teeth, and the length of time which had elapsed since the dentures had been provided. With the exception of the distributions in denture materials and the years since the dentures had been provided, the series of responding cases, compared with the whole statistically on the basis of the chi-square test, was not different in the above-mentioned distributions.
