Bachiller

Journal of Oral Rehabilitation 2001 28; 991±997

Periodontal ®ndings in patients 10 years after insertion
of removable partial dentures
M. KERN* & B. WAGNER²

*Department of Prosthodontics, Propaedeutics and Dental Materials, Christian-Albrechts

²

University Kiel, Germany and Department of Prosthodontics, Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany

The purpose of thisretrospective study
was to evaluate the changes in the periodontal
conditions of patients wearing different designs of
removable partial dentures over long-term. Seventy-four patients treated with 101 mainly conical
crown-retained dentures (CCRDs) or clasp-retained
removable partial dentures (RPDs) or a combination
of conical crown and clasp-retained dentures
(CRPDs) were re-examined 10 years afterinsertion.
Periodontal ®ndings were compared with baseline

SUMMARY

Introduction
Thirty years ago the conical crown was introduced into
prosthodontics as a development of the well-known
telescopic crown system (Korber, 1968, 1988). In
È
combination with a removable partial denture, the
conical crown has become widely used in Germany and
other countries. However, only limited data on theclinical long-term outcome of conical crown-retained
removable partial dentures has been published in the
scienti®c literature.
The main reason for failure of the removable partial
dentures is the loss of abutment teeth because of
periodontal breakdown or caries (Korber et al., 1975).
È
Periodontally involved abutment teeth (Walther &
Heners, 1989, 1992; Igarashi & Goto, 1997) andremovable partial dentures supported only by few
remaining teeth (Heners & Walther, 1990; Igarashi
& Goto, 1997) showed lower survival rates than
periodontally healthy abutment teeth or removable
partial dentures with four or more abutment teeth.
In a recent publication on the long-term clinical
outcome of conical crown- and/or clasp-retained
removable partial dentures after a mean observation
ã2001 Blackwell Science Ltd

values at insertion. A deterioration of the probing
depths (PDs) and tooth mobility was found. The
abutment teeth of the RPDs suffered more severe
deterioration than the abutment teeth of the CCRDs
and the CRPDs. The absence of a regular recall
system for the patients may be responsible for this
outcome.
KEYWORDS: conical crown-retained dentures, longtermclinical study, probing depth, periotest value,
1 removable partial dentures, tooth mobility

time of 10 years, a 60á4% overall success rate of the
dentures and an abutment tooth survival rate of 77á5%
were reported (Wagner & Kern, 2000). However, the
periodontal conditions of the surviving abutment teeth
have not been analysed yet.
Therefore, the purpose of this clinical study was toevaluate the long-term changes in the periodontal
conditions of abutment teeth of conical crown- and/or
clasp-retained removable partial dentures. The results
of the clinical evaluation after 10 years were compared
with the baseline values which had been taken at the
time of insertion in 1987/1988. It is our hypothesis that
changes in the periodontal conditions of the abutment
teeth are in¯uencedby the number of abutment teeth
and the design of the removable partial dentures.

Materials and methods
The study population, prosthetic therapy and limitations of the study have been previously described in
detail (Wagner & Kern, 2000). Of initially 147 patients
with 194 removable partial dentures, 74 patients
(50á3%) having initially 101 dentures (52á1%) and
482 remaining teeth wereavailable for re-evaluation

991

992

M. KERN & B. WAGNER
after a mean observation time of 10á0 ‹ 0á3 years. The
reasons for non-attendance in the re-examination
were, in about 53á4% of the cases, death, disease and
moving out of the area, and in 46á6% lack of interest or
unknown reasons (Wagner & Kern, 2000).
At baseline the re-examined 101 removable partial
dentures consisted of...