Prosthetic rehabilitation in the elderly inhabitants of Helsinki, Finland.

The aim of this study was to document the number of remaining natural teeth, to examine the prosthetic rehabilitation and to evaluate further prosthetic treatment needs among a representative sample of 76-86-year-old inhabitants of Helsinki. The edentulous made up 46% (168) of the subjects, 40% of the men and 48% of the women. Of these edentulous, 94% (158) wore complete dentures in both jaws, 2% wore only a maxillary denture, and 4% wore no dentures at all. One edentulous subject had an implant-supported overdenture in the lower jaw. More than half (54%) of all subjects had 1-32 natural teeth left. These dentate subjects had 47% (mean 13.2, excluding the wisdom teeth) of their natural teeth remaining. Of the remaining teeth, 13% (mean 1.8) were crowned and 5% (mean 0.6) were indicated to be extracted. Among the dentate, 37% (mean 10.4) of their natural teeth were missing and replaced by some type of fixed or removable prosthesis. Eleven per cent (mean 3.1) of missing teeth had not been replaced and were considered not to need prosthetic replacement. However, 5% (mean 1.3) of the missing teeth without prosthetic replacement were judged to need a prosthesis. Among the dentate, 37% wore a complete denture in one jaw; 34% of the dentate subjects used acrylic removable partial dentures (ARPD), and 19% used metallic removable partial dentures (MRPD). Of the dentate, 45% had crowns and fixed bridges. Altogether, 25% wore some kind of combination of fixed and removable prosthesis, whereas 14% had no type of prosthetic rehabilitation at all. The age of the current prosthesis varied from less than one year to over 50 years. Of all the subjects, 37% (6% of the edentulous and 63% of the dentate) had experienced inadequate prosthetic rehabilitation.