Methods: A cross-sectional clinical trial was conducted and 20 volunteers (mean age 67.4 ± 8.3 years) with upper and lower total edentulism were selected. All subjects have received new complete dentures, which were adjusted to bilateral balanced occlusion. After 3 months of adaptation to new dentures, masticatory performance was assessed in three situations: (1) without DA; (2) using cream DA; and (3) using strip DA. The sequence was randomly established and adhesives were applied on lower denture. Masticatory performance was evaluated by chewing an artificial test material Optocal using a sieving method and it was defined as the median particle size (X50). Data were submitted to exploratory analyzes and showed normal distribution. PROC GLM procedure of the SAS statistical program was applied and multiple comparisons were accomplished by the Tukey-Kramer test with a significance level of 5%.
Results: Regardless of the adhesive type (p = 0.072), consistent improvement was observed in masticatory performance when adhesives were used (p < 0.001).
Conclusions: The results of this study provide evidence that the use of DA can enhance mastication of complete denture wearers.