Guideline for Denture Relining

With the increasing attention to oral health in recent years, the number of residual teeth retained by individuals has been increasing with each generation. According to the survey of dental diseases in 2005, the percentage of individuals between 80 and 84 years of age retaining 20 or more teeth was 21.1%, thus exceeding 20% for the first time since this survey was started. The survey in 2005, however, showed that there was still a high percentage of individuals with multiple missing teeth, i.e., individuals using dentures. It is well known that the alveolar ridge inevitably undergoes resorption with advancing age, irrespective of whether or not the individual uses dentures. For this reason, dentures are destined to show deterioration in fit no matter how well they are initially prepared. Means available to deal with loss of denture fit are fabricating new dentures or relining. Relining can reduce the frequency of a patient’s visits and medical expenses as compared to fabricating new dentures. Under such circumstances, the Japan Prosthodontic Society decided to prepare relining guidelines. When preparing this set of guidelines, we followed the procedures for preparing evidencebased clinical practice guidelines. However, because of the specific nature of dental treatment and dentistry, it is difficult to conduct studies designed to provide the evidence for each treatment in this field. Because of these limitations, we prepared this set of guidelines on the basis of limited evidence obtained by searching for scientific papers and consensus among specialists. This guideline will have to be periodically modified when additional rationales or clinical findings are revealed in scientific clinical studies.