Influence of literacy level on pretreatment expectations of patients seeking removable dentures

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