Page 138 - Impact of implant retained overdenture treatment and speech, oromyofunction, social participation and quality of life.

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Chapter 6
Fig 1. A view on the implanted jaw (lower image) and the final overdenture (upper image) of subjects in study group paper 1 (A), study group paper 2 (B) and study group paper 3 (C).
It is important when it comes to knowledge of specific dental care, being a speech-language pathologist or a psychologist, to understand the technical, prosthetical changes required in this kind of treatment. Due to multiple adjustments made to the oral environment during treatment, some (speech) difficulties are to be expected. Especially shortly after the adjustments are made. We aimed in our studies, to give a detailed overview of the trajectory of speech, oromyofunctional behavior, satisfaction and OHRQoL for the three different kinds of overdenture treatments. Without going into detail, an overview of the clinical aspects of the three study groups is provided in appendix. The following sketches the specific technicality of the implant overdenture treatment, which can possibly interfere with our outcome measurements (speech, oromyofunctional behavior,...).
Implant-retained overdentures are anchored over locator abutments or a bar, splinting the implants supracrestally. When patients present with atrophy of the jaw, the bucco-lingual width of the denture can be too small to fit the supracrestal anchoring device. The technically required minimum dimensions of the attachment system inside the overdenture, forces the dental technician to modify the shape of the overdenture. Therefore the overdenture is often wider than the existing prosthesis. The shape of the overdenture can be slightly different to the shape of the initial removable denture. This may, despite the