Evaluation of Masticatory Function of Senegalese Patients for Removable Partial Dentures Wearers with Distal Extension Edentulism

Background/Aim. The aim of this study was to evaluate the masticatory function of subjects wearing a metalpartial denture restoring Kennedy’s class I and II edentulism and to compare them with a control group.Methods. The evaluation included 68 patients (33 wearers of removable partial metal denture restoring terminaledentulism and 35 dentate control subjects without appliances). Peanut and raw carrot were used as test foods.Video recordings were used to collect values for the number of chewing cycles and chewing times. After passingthrough the calibrated sieves, a “Mastica” input mask was used to record the average particle size of the chews(D50).Results. In the 33 subjects with removable partial denture (RPD), 82% of whom had Kennedy class I edentulismand 18% had class II edentulism. Among them, 54.5% were women and 45.5% were men. The age group 46-71years was predominantly represented in this study with 75.7%. The subjects who had worn their prostheses for6 months were in the majority with 57.57% of the population. Concerning the length of edentulism (LE), 42.4%had a small LE, 39.4% a medium LE and 18.2% a large LE For both test foods, the number of chewing cycles wastwice as high with RDP wearers compared to the control subjects. For the duration of the sequence, subjectswith RDP performed twice as long for the carrot and three times as long for the peanut to make the food suitablefor swallowing. The average D50 of RDP subjects was similar to that of the control subjects, i.e. 1.90 mm ± 0.19(D50 peanut control: 1.93 ± 0.5) and 1.74 mm ± 0.36 (D50 carrot control: 1.79 mm ± 0.44) for peanut and carrotrespectively.Conclusion. This study revealed that subjects with RPD restoring distal extension edentulism had efficientcompensatory chewing with a greater number and time of chewing sequences than randomly selected normodentsubjects. The comparative analysis between the chewing kinetic parameters of the RPD wearers and controlsubjects was statistically significant.