Objectives: It is difficult to identify patients who will have problems accommodating to their complete dentures. Direct questions of satisfaction with denture treatment in edentulous patients may help to identify patients who have had difficulties using their complete dentures or may be difficult to treat. Instruments such as the Oral Health Impact Profile – 14 (OHIP-14) may be useful in identifying such persons prior to beginning of complete denture therapy. This study compared the efficacy of the OHIP-14 to direct questions in helping to identify dissatisfied persons in a population of edentulous persons.

Methods: 100 patients who had their complete dentures made at the University of Iowa between 1996 and 2002 were recalled. The subjects' oral tissues and dentures were clinically examined, a panoramic film was made and a questionnaire including a denture satisfaction survey as well as the OHIP-14 were completed. McNemar's test was used to compare the responses in the denture satisfaction survey with equivalent questions in the OHIP-14. Cohen's kappa was used as a measure of agreement on the pairs of questions.

Results: There were no significant differences in the proportions of pairs responding to "yes" for questions related to satisfaction with function (p=0.51) or questions related to comfort (p=0.99). However, for esthetics, there was a significant difference in proportion of pairs responding to "yes" (p <0.0001). Kappa coefficients for function were 0.30 (0.08, 0.53), for comfort 0.25 (0.03, 0.47), and for esthetics 0.34 (0.20, 0.48), all of which were indicative of slight agreement.

Conclusions: The use of the OHIP-14 instrument may help to identify subjects who were not satisfied with their dentures or denture treatment and may be useful as a screening tool for patient's seeking treatment for complete dentures.

Funded by the ACP/ESPE Fellowship in Geriatric Prosthodontics

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