RESUMO
The objective of this study was to find out any association between pretreatment expectations of prosthodontic patients with their literacy level. For this, a cross-sectional survey was carried out on 100 new patients requiring complete or partial dentures. A self-designed close-ended questionnaire, based on nine relevant questions was used. Patients were required to answer as "Yes" or "No." Afterwards, a numeric calculation was done to derive a final score that ranged from 9 upto 18. This final score was used to categorize the expectations of the patients into five groups i.e. very low [score of 9-10], relatively low [score of 11-12], moderate [score of 13-14], relatively high [score of 15-16], and very high [score of 17-18]. Overall, only 3 [3.0%] patients had the ideal very low expectations and both belonged to the literate groups. In contrast, very high expectations were seen in 10 [10.0%] illiterate patients only. Chi-square test revealed significant association of pretreatment expectations with literacy level [P<0.001]. It was concluded that patient expectations from removable dentures were highly influenced by their literacy status