POLYAMIDE FLEXIBLE DENTURES – A BETTER OR WORSE STRATEGY

Background: Polyamide dentures have added advantages over the acrylic dentures in terms of esthetics, comfort and versatility to adapt to the undercut areas. However, the effect of flexibility of these dentures from the view of residual ridge resorption has always been obscure. The aim of this study is to compare the type of denture base with the distribution of masticatory forces by examining the changes on the alveolar mucosa in the histological picture before and after insertion of two widely used dentures. Materials and methods: A total of 20 participants were included in the study, among which 10 patients were allocated for acrylic removable partial dentures and 10 patients were allocated for polyamide flexible removable partial dentures. The patients were asked to rinse their mouth and cement spatula was used to collect the epithelial mucous cells noninvasively by scraping the crest of the residual alveolar ridge with light pressure in premolar-molar area both before insertion and 2 weeks after insertion of the removable partial dentures. The said swab was then smeared on a clean glass slide and fixed in 95% ethyl alcohol and was stained by Papanicolaou (PAP) stain. The PAP-stained smear was analyzed for the presence of keratinized cells and the number of keratinocytes was counted for both acrylic and polyamide denture groups. Results: The results show that both types of denture bases altered the alveolar mucosal keratinization but there was a significant difference in number of keratinized cells between all the three groups. Polyamide flexible partial dentures showed more ortho-keratinized epithelium, which favours better occlusal load distribution. Conclusion: The results concluded that there was decreased masticatory load on the residual alveolar ridge under polyamide denture group due to the flexibility of the denture base material compared to that of the acrylic denture group.