Decision to use denture adhesive in complete denture wearers after one-month run-in period: A quasi-experimental study.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess two patient-based outcomes of complete denture (CD) wearers who continued or discontinued using denture adhesive (DA) after one-month run-in period of DA use. METHODS: This quasi-experimental study comprised 76 CD wearers. The two patient-based outcomes were oral health-related quality of life and masticatory performance, determined by the Thai-version of oral impacts on daily performances index and multiple sieve method of 20-stroke peanut mastication. Denture retention and stability were evaluated using the CU-modified Kapur criteria to classify the CD into acceptable or unacceptable quality. The outcomes were collected at 3 time points: 1) at baseline (T0), 2) after a 1-month run-in period of DA use (T1), at which time the participants decided whether to continue using DA, and 3) 1-month after continuing or discontinuing using DA (T2). Changes in the percentages of having an oral impact from T0 to T2 were evaluated using the McNemar's test. The effect of denture quality and the decision to use DA on peanut particle size across time points were assessed using repeated measures ANOVA. The peanut particle size changes in each group between time points were evaluated using the one-way repeated measures ANOVA and Tukey post-hoc comparison test. RESULTS: The participants who continued using DA at T2 had greater oral impact reduction after the 1-month run-in period of DA use, whereas cleaning and emotional impacts emerged in those who discontinued using DA. At T1 and T2, the peanut particle size of the participants who continued and discontinued using DA was not significantly changed from T0, except for the acceptable CD wearers who discontinued using DA at T2, whose peanut particle size decreased from T0 to T2. CONCLUSIONS: Baseline oral impacts and their change influenced CD wearers' decision whether to continue using DA. However, masticatory performance did not affect the patients' decision.

Usability assessment of an electronic health record in a comprehensive dental clinic.

In this paper we present the development and usability of an electronic health record (EHR) system in a comprehensive dental clinic.The graphic user interface of the system was designed to consider the concept of cognitive ergonomics.The cognitive task analysis was used to evaluate the user interface of the EHR by identifying all sub-tasks and classifying them into mental or physical operators, and to predict task execution time required to perform the given task. We randomly selected 30 cases that had oral examinations for routine clinical care in a comprehensive dental clinic. The results were based on the analysis of 4 prototypical tasks performed by ten EHR users. The results showed that on average a user needed to go through 27 steps to complete all tasks for one case. To perform all 4 tasks of 30 cases, they spent about 91 min (independent of system response time) for data entry, of which 51.8 min were spent on more effortful mental operators. In conclusion, the user interface can be improved by reducing the percentage of mental effort required for the tasks.