Comparison of perceived masticatory ability in completely edentulous patients treated with thermoplastic complete denture versus single implant-retained mandibular overdenture: a single-center prospective observational study.

Background: This study aimed to compare the perceived masticatory ability (PrMA) in completely edentulous patients (EDPs) with thermoplastic conventional complete dentures (CDs) versus single implant-retained mandibular overdentures.

Methods: The current study was conducted in the outpatient Prosthodontic Clinic, Faculty of Dental Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt. PrMA was evaluated in 45 completely edentulous patients (46% males, mean age 50.4 ± 4.7 years). Each patient received a thermoplastic PMMA complete denture (Polyan IC TM Bredent GmbH & Co.KG, Germany). The PrMA was evaluated at one-month and six-month intervals of denture use. An immediate loading single implant was placed into the mid-symphyseal for each patient, and the denture was adjusted. Subsequently, the PrMA was reevaluated after one month and six months. The data were collected and statistically analyzed using the SPSSV25 to assess the changes in PrMA.

Results: The PrMA demonstrated improvement after six months of thermoplastic conventional denture use. However, this improvement was not statistically significant ( = 0.405). In addition, the PrMA showed a substantial increase following a single implant placement at one and six months ( < 0.001) of the overdenture use compared to the conventional denture. The PrMA insignificantly improved ( = 0.397) after six months of the single implant retained overdenture use.

Discussion: The study's findings indicate that using immediate loading single implant-retained mandibular overdentures significantly improved PrMA in completely edentulous patients.