2017 Volume 32 Issue 3 Pages 365-372
Some elderly patients who receive home-visit dental treatment do not use their newly fabricated dentures. The aim of this study was to investigate factors associated with non-use of newly fabricated dentures among elderly Japanese patients during home-visit dental treatment.
In total, 108 patients received newly fabricated dentures in a private practice in Kumamoto prefecture from August 2012 to July 2013. The usage situation of the new dentures was recorded. Additional information obtained from medical records included age, sex, medical history, care need certification, oral state by Eichner’s classification, and experience of wearing dentures prior to the manufacture of new dentures, which were compared between the denture use and denture non-use groups after the newly fabricated dentures were divided into upper jaw（n＝88）or lower jaw（n＝83）categories. Logistic regression analysis was performed with non-use of the newly fabricated dentures as a dependent variable and age, sex, experience of wearing dentures and care need certification as independent variables.
Overall, 7 subjects（8.0％）did not use the newly fabricated dentures in the upper jaw and 7 subjects（8.4％）did not use them in the lower jaw. Among those who did not use the newly fabricated dentures, the percentage of subjects with no denture-wearing experience was 71.4％ in the upper jaw and 85.7％ in the lower jaw groups. Logistic regression analysis showed that no experience of wearing dentures was associated with non-use of the newly fabricated dentures during home-visit dental treatment after adjusting for age, sex, experience of wearing dentures and care need certification.
These results suggest that no experience of wearing dentures is associated with a risk of non-use of newly fabricated dentures among elderly Japanese patients during home-visit dental treatment.
