Assessment of Patient's Expectations on Removable Partial Denture Prosthesis

Tooth loss can have negative impacts on facial appearance, speech, and mastication. The replacement of missing teeth by appropriately designed prosthesis is in demand and is required to maintain a good health status and normal life. There are several modalities of treatment for rehabilitation of partial edentulous patients. These include implant supported prosthesis, teeth supported bridges and removable partial denture. RPDs are applied to restore facial form and masticatory function after loss of natural teeth. There is a lack of available information on patient satisfaction and complaints with RPD. The purpose of this retrospective study was to investigate the expectation level on removable partial denture among patients in OP of saveetha dental college. A set of 15 questionnaires in regards to assess the level of patients expectations on removable partial denture prosthesis were taken. 100 random participants of independent age and sex were selected from OP of Saveetha dental college and asked them to fill the questionnaire. The survey was conducted on an online forum. The results were obtained and analysed statistically.Among the 100 participants, 52 of them are male and 48 of them are female in which more than 50 % of participants are above 40 years old. More than 70% of the participants have edentulousness or missing teeth. In which 40 % of them have previous denture experience. The major difficulties of the participants with the edentulousness or missing teeth are discomfort in mastication (60%), phonetic difficulties (56%) and Aesthetical problems (47%). The average level of expectation regarding the fitness of removable partial denture is 3.55/5. The average level of expectation regarding the functional limitation of RPD 3.38/5. The average level of expectation regarding the phonetical comfortness of RPD is 3.39/5 and the average level of expectation on the aesthetic comfortness is 3.48/5. More than 75% of the participants wish to undergo removable denture prosthesis with an average overall satisfactory level of 3.58/5. Within the limitations of this study, the majority of participants have high levels of expectation with their removable partial dentures treatment. The most common expectation was fitness and aesthetic issues, which suggests that dental treatments with removable partial denture should be applied with care when patients have high aesthetics, phonetical and functional concerns.