Denture hygiene habits among elderly patients wearing complete dentures.

OBJECTIVE To determine the denture hygiene habits in complete denture patients according to their age and time of dentures. METHODS In this study a self administered structured was developed to know the attitude of the patients regarding denture hygiene in the department of Prosthodontics. The total study sample consisted of 230 subjects including 124 (53.9%) males and 106 (46.1%) females. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 15.0 with chi-square test at p-value <0.05. RESULTS Nearly half of the subjects clean their dentures daily once. Participants from the younger age group and who had been wearing dentures since 2 years maintain better frequency of cleaning. The majority of these subjects used water and brush for denture cleansing. After seeing the condition, half of the dentures were rated as good 50.3%, followed by fair and poor as 29.5 and 20.2% respectively. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE Poor condition of complete dentures seen in the population is mainly due to irregularly cleansing habits and also less usage of cleansing solutions. Dentists should give proper instructions regarding maintenance of denture hygiene.