PROBLEMS OF ADAPTATION TO REMOVABLE PROSTHESES IN PATIENTS OF DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS

Adentia is a fairly wide-spread condition among the population. Even at current level of dentistry and materials science development the proportion of patients who do not use removable prostheses, according to various data from foreign and domestic researchers, reaches almost a third. Due to the fact that removable prostheses are combined irritants of prosthetic bed tissues, adaptation to them is an urgent problem of orthopedic dentistry. The process of adaptation to prostheses, according to Russian researchers, takes place on average in the period of 10 to 33 days and depends on many factors, which include anatomical, physiological and individual features of the dento-alveolar apparatus, the condition of the oral mucosa, the degree of the jaw bone's atrophy, the choice and design features of the prosthesis, as well as features of the patient's psychological state. The purpose of this work was to study the peculiarities of adaptation to removable prostheses in patients of different age groups. Materials and methods. A clinical and statistical analysis of 170 outpatient dental records was carried out (form 043/U) for the type of adentia and prosthetics. Next, the patients were offered to fill a questionnaire developed by us, which contained questions that made it possible to assess the adaptation timing, the main complaints when using removable prostheses. All patients underwent a clinical anthropometric examination in order to identify macroglossia according to the technique that we proposed, the finings of which were processed using the authors-developed computer program "Clinical and Biometric Assessment of the Human Tongue Volumetric Enlargement". Study results. The largest number of partial removable prostheses was found to be registered in patients with secondary adentia of Kennedy class 1 and 2. When analyzing the incidence of macroglossia depending on Kennedy adentia class, it was established that it was the most often detected in the 1st class, and the least often – in the 4th class. Conclusions. Our observations showed that in all age groups, patients with complete adentia got used to dentures faster than those with partial absence of teeth. The duration of adaptation processes depends not only on the age and type of secondary adentia according to Kennedy classification, but also on the increase in the size of the tongue – macroglossia, which develops in the overwhelming number of patients as a result of prolonged absence of teeth and hyperfunction of the tongue.