RESUMO
Having an appropriate diet in toothless patients with complete dentures should be considered to provide their required nutritions. In this research, our purpose is to assess serum levels of iron and folic acid in some of the patient refered to the prosthetic department of Mashhad Dental School, both before and after the replacing of prostheses and also to study the serum level changes in them. This interventional study was done on 30 cases. A standard questionnaire including two parts, has been used the first contains personal information and the second part contains a chart for information on the primary and secondary serum levels of iron and folic acid. The primary level of iron and folic acid indicates the level of them after three months period, of being toothless. And the secondary level indicates the level of them three months after applying the prostheses [Artificial teeth]. For statistical analyses, t student test and t test pair were used. Evaluation of the gathered data in the population of this study in which the mean age was 52.6 years old, demonstrated low iron and folic serum levels, comparing to normal range, both in the first and second sampling. Also, the assessment of the secondary iron level changes compared to its primary level didn't show any significant decrease, while the folic acid decrease was quite significant [P=0.003]. The study of these changes based on different sexes, only demonstrated a significant difference in iron serum level [P=0.012]; while in the case of folic acid there was no difference in the secondary decrease between men and women. According to findings of this research, the role of healthy teeth in having an appropriate diet and providing calorie and required nutritions, due to effective chewing power, was emphacised, applying substitute prostheses could not have an correcting the nutritional diet of these subjects. Therefore, it is suggested these patients should get education on correcting their diet with supplements and other nutritions, or having control periods for checking their nutritional health
RESUMO
Assessment of edentulous patients' motivation to attend practical denturists office for providing a denture, was important for us. 450 patients were selected by "random sampling" method and each case was analyzed by his or her choices in the questionaire. Results were presented by bar diagrams and pie charts. There was a significant relationship between the number of patients attending denturists office and the patient's level of education. The higher the level of education the less the patients showed up in the partical denturist's office. There was also a relationship between the number of patients attending denturist's office and the patient's economical class, so the higher the economic class of the patients, the less they showed up in the practical denturists office. There were several reasons for referring to the practical denturists but the major reasons were as follow: 1. Rapid construction and delivery of denture. 2. Encouragement of relatives and friends of patients. 3. Practical denturists seemed more experienced to the patients. 4. Lower cost of practical denturist's sevices