[Prosthodontic treatment of missing molars (distal edentulous state class 1B); practice in Hungary based on mass screening].

Between the years of 1985 and 1989 we examined 9991 people. From the examined patients those people were selected, who lost their molars on one or both side, but they had no greater continuous edentate area in their dental arch than four teeth. The recorded data were evaluated separately by arches. 486 upper and 1568 lower arches filled the requirements of us. Patients wore in the upper jaw in 216 cases (46%) fixed prostheses with posterior cantilever pontic, in 26 cases (5%) combined prostheses (fixed + removable partial denture), in 18 cases (4%) removable partial dentures. 208 (45%) cases were untreated. In the lower arch in 417 cases (27%) fixed prostheses with a posterior cantilever pontic, in 97 cases (6%) combined prostheses (fixed + removable partial denture), in 57 cases (3%) removable partial dentures were constructed. 997 cases were (63%) were untreated. The results of this study indicate, that the treatment of distal edenate arches in the everyday practice is also verifying our prosthetic planning guidelines.