Digital Versus Conventional Dentures Evaluated at One and Six Months

Objectives: Recent advances in CAD/CAM technology allow complete dentures to be virtually designed from digitally scanned polyvinyl siloxane impressions and milled from dense acrylic base materials. As digital dentures become commercially available, there is a need for clinical studies to evaluate the outcomes of this technology. This study assessed patient satisfaction and specific clinical outcomes at one and six months, including retention, esthetics, lip support, VDO, and occlusion of digital dentures in comparison to traditional dentures.
Methods: Five patients with two edentulous arches and five patients with one edentulous arch requiring maxillary and mandibular complete dentures were used for this study. Two sets of complete dentures were fabricated per edentulous arch for each patient. All dentures were evaluated for retention, function and esthetics at one month following delivery of their first set of dentures. Patients were asked to compare specific details about the dentures using a survey at one and six months post-delivery and all outcomes were evaluated by the same individual to eliminate sources of bias. The survey consists of ten questions for each type of denture delivered and responses range from one to ten, bad to excellent. Occlusal contacts were recorded with articulating paper at the delivery appointment and photographed for comparison before necessary adjustments were made.
Results: Patients were generally very satisfied with both sets of dentures after one month as most survey responses were seven and above. Patients rated the retention of the mandibular digital denture to be higher than the traditional denture (p=0.01). For the remaining questions, p-values ranged from 0.10 to 0.37; therefore, differences were not statistically significant.
Conclusions: Patients report high satisfaction with dentures fabricated traditionally and digitally. Patients indicated retention of mandibular digital dentures is superior when compared to traditional mandibular dentures. In one month surveys, most patients preferred to wear the digital dentures although differences in most survey questions were not statistically significant.