PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF PATIENT SATISFACTION AND ACCEPTANCE OF COMPLETE DENTURES

총의치 환자 만족도에 대한 정신의학적 측면

In spite of the progress in techniques and materials of the prosthodontic rehabilitation of patients with complete edentulous arches, prosthodontists still face patients' complaints about dissatisfaction and discomfort from their dentures. In the past several decades, prosthodontists tried to find the factors that influence the patient's satisfaction with dentures. However the results are contraversial especially with the psychological factor. In this study using 'patient denture satisfaction questionnaire' and Hopkins Symptom Checklist, we tried to find the correlation between the patient's denture satisfaction and the patient's psychological aspects. 23 complete edentulous patients who have visited the Department of Prosthodontics, Yonsei University Dental Hospital from September 1998 to June 1999 for complete denture treatment were asked to complete the questionnaires 4 to 6 weeks after the upper and lower complete delivery. After the measurement of validity of the questionnaires, correlations between the patient's general satisfaction with their new upper and lower complete dentures and the other satisfaction questions including the satisfactions with esthetics, retention, mastication, speech, comfort and other people's opinion and between the patient's general satisfaction with their new upper and lower complete dentures and the 5 symptoms of Hopkins Symptoms Checklist including somatic, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression and anxiety were analyzed. Among the several satisfaction questionnaire items, comfort with the lower denture showed highest relation to the patient's general satisfaction with dentures. However, only the anxiety scale of Hopkins Symptoms Checklist among the other symptom scales was related to the patient's general satisfaction with dentures. The two questionaires used in this study turned out to be valid means of analyzing patient's denture satisfaction and psychological status before and after the complete denture treatment.