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For many years, it has been considered necessary to restore posterior support with a bilateral free-end saddle when a full upper denture is opposed by a shortened dental arch. It was thought that this would provide occlusal stability and prevent anterior bite collapse and temporomandibular dysfunction. As free-end saddle partial dentures are often poorly tolerated by patients, this case study tests whether a retentive full-upper denture occluding with a shortened dental arch offers enough to fulfil a patient's needs.
CPD/Clinical Relevance: An increasingly elderly population will present dental practitioners with more partially dentate patients requiring treatment.
Article
It has been traditionally accepted that a full upper denture requires good retention and stability to be of functional use to a patient. Authors have separated the principles of retention, resistance to displacement along the path of insertion, and stability, the resistance of a denture to displacement by functional forces.1,2,3 These forces may be forces acting to displace the denture in many different directions.4
Historically, an edentulous maxillary arch opposed by a shortened mandibular arch would have been treated with a complete upper denture and a bilateral free-end saddle removable partial denture (RPD).5 Since then, significant research has led to the shortened dental arch (SDA) concept which states that 10 occluding pairs of teeth are sufficient for masticatory function.6 With this in mind, is the looseness of a maxillary complete denture occluding with a SDA attributable to a lack of posterior support or can it be corrected by a more accurate reproduction of the denture-bearing area?
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