Elderly awareness on the government paid- denture prosthetic projects

Objective: Government paid denture prosthetics projects have performed for low-income elderly since 2002.

But the fundamental data to evaluate these projects has not sufficient to this times. At first, the aim of this retrospective study was evaluated to make a baseline for a national project for the delivery of free paid-denture programs to the elderly.

Methods: The sample was given, from 2002 to 2006, to 131 adults over 65 years of age with dentures living in Chinju city,Gyeongsang province. The group of age(AG) level has 3 devided.The questionnaire consited 20 statements on patients'objective perception of free paid denture and 3 or 5 point ordinal scale and analyzed chi-sqare test.

Results: 44.3% of all surveyed stated their dentures feel comfortable.The rates of each AG reported feeling comfortable with their dentures are 39.7% of 65-74 AG

(P=0.021),50% of 75-84 AG(P=0.007),and 10.3% of 85 or older AG(P=0.023).The rate of denture repair has one more over the past 1-3 years varied with each AGP>0.05).Denture repair was reported by 60-70% of those in the 65-74 AG and 45-70% in the 75-84 AG.

Most of the elderly feel more comfortable with new dentures than previous ones. But elderly over 85 years old feel no difference between the old and new dentures. 46.7% of all group checked felt gingival pain and 45% were satisfied with their facial appearance, except those over 85. 54.2% of 65-74 AG,51.5% of 75-84 AG and 62.5% of those over 85 reported satisfaction with their dentures(P=0.194).

Conclusions: More than half of patients were satisfied with having missing teeth replaced with denture from a functional and aesthic points.

Low-income elderly should be covered by government supported denture projects to increase oral health and quality of life.