Abstract
In a hospital or nursing home for the elderly, it is not easy to prove the identity of each person's removable denture. If the denture owner has a mental disability, this may be a very difficult task for the nursing staff. Therefore, some dentists have recommended marking the owner's name on the denture.
In this study, one of the authors interviewed 36 disabled elderly to ask whether they wanted marking on the denture or not. 25 of them preferred to have their name marked. This demand was not related to mental disability.
Markings were then placed inside 44 dentures of the 25 elderly who wished for their name to be marked. The marking method was developed by us with a kanji label writer and light curing translucent resin.
One month later, we were able to check 42 dentures closely. Only one (2.4%) showed a small break of the mark margin.
One year later, we found sligth changes on 4/25 (16.0%) of the dentures. These were small margin exfoliations or surface coloring of the mark. However, the name could be easily identified on all dentures.
Finally, we elicited responses from the nursing staff and guardians of the elderly. All of them appreciated our project and stated that the marking was very usefull for the disabled elderly.
