Student Clinical Chair Time for Intermaxillary Records

Objectives: Introduction
Complete denture fabrication involves five stages that conventionally require 4 to 5 visits to the clinic. The Intermaxillary records/ bite registration stage is relatively longer than all others - the student average duration has not previously been determined. Techniques to minimize chair time have been described. Silversin and Shafer (1978) compared the time and methods used for complete denture construction by dental students and general dental practitioner. They found that there were differences between the time taken and number of stages employed.

Aims and objectives
This study determines the number of patients visits required and amount of time spent to complete the bite registration stage by final year dental students at a dental school in South Africa.

Design
This was a record based cross sectional descriptive study

Methods: Treatment records of patients who received a complete set of conventional dentures following supervised treatment by final year dental students at the Integrated Clinical Dentistry between January and December 2015 were reviewed. Data related to the bite registration stage; number of visits and duration, and demographic characteristics was extracted and analysed. A visit referred to a scheduled supervised clinical session. The duration of the visit was timed by supervisors.

Results: The average age of the patients was 65.9 years with a range of 22 to 83 years. The gender distribution was roughly equal. Patients made an average of 6 visits (SD 2.052) to the clinic to obtain a set of dentures. On average, patients made two visits to the clinic to complete the bite registration stage. The average duration of the bite registration stage was 2hrs 16 minutes with a range of 1hr to 6hrs.

Conclusions: Relative to other stages, the bite registration stage takes up a large amount of time necessary to obtain a conventional complete set of dentures.