For over three decades and since the preliminary studies on osseointegration, dental implants have been used extensively for the rehabilitation of completely and partially edentulous patients. Dental implant treatment provides many benefits including ...
For over three decades and since the preliminary studies on osseointegration, dental implants have been used extensively for the rehabilitation of completely and partially edentulous patients. Dental implant treatment provides many benefits including oral function improvement and greater patient satisfaction. The improvement arising from the dental implant’s objective function appears to depend on the particular type of implant support used with the denture. The early form of implant prosthesis for the complete edentulous patient was a fixed-detachable hybrid prostheses developed by Zarb. It consisted of attaching the denture teeth with a heat-polymerized acrylic resin to a cast metal substructure. More recently, a metal ceramic fixed partial denture type of implant prosthesis is frequently used. It is reported that the number and positioning of implants have an influence on the force transfer and subsequent stress distribution around implants. Nevertheless, a quantitative comparison has not been made between the type of implant prosthesis used with different materials.The objective of this study is to assess the masticatory performance, bite force and impact of two different type of implant-stabilized prostheses on oral health-related quality of life compared to conventional methods such as a GOHAI complete denture, validated oral-specific health status measures, the sieving method, and the Prescale Dental System.From the years 1999 to 2006, a total of 30 completely edentulous patients in a single arch were selected from the Yonsei University Dental Hospital, Department of Prosthodontics and Implant Clinic in Seoul, S. Korea. Patients were divided into 3 groups of 10 each.Group I was restored with fixed-detachable hybrid prostheses with resin teeth. Group II had fixed dentures with porcelain teeth while Group III had a complete denture. The results show a significant improvement in oral health-related quality of life with dental implants compared to a conventional denture in GOHAI comparison. Overall, implant prostheses showed a higher masticatory performance (S50) and maximum bite force compared with conventional dentures (p< 0.05). The numbers of implant and material of implant prostheses does not appear to impact patient satisfaction, masticatory performance or bite force.