A team led by Prof. Barry Gibson, Professor in Medical Sociology, School of Clinical Dentistry and member of the Healthy Lifespan Institute at The University of Sheffield, has been awarded £200k from GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Research & Development, UK to study the experiences of people living with removable partial dentures.
Society, on a global scale, is living longer and retaining more natural teeth. This change has been facilitated by improvements in oral health and a shift in dental practise towards retaining natural teeth for longer. A consequence of this transition is that more and more people will remain ‘partially dentate’.
Loss of teeth and placement of dentures has a significant emotional impact and patients can often struggle to adapt to their dentures. But we know relatively little about patients’ journeys when adapting to removable dentures. This is important because if we are to measure the benefits of treatment, we need to understand patients’ experiences with dentures. We also need to be able to prepare patients for living with dentures.
This study is a mixed method qualitative study designed to examine the impact of dentures on everyday life through interviews, participant observation and targeted sensory ethnography. The researchers will interview people from the general population who are living through the process of wearing dentures, as well as those who recently had dentures fitted. These interviews will help provide a detailed overview of the symptomatic, functional, emotional and personal impact of wearing dentures. The research team will also follow a group of patients who will be having new dentures fitted in order to better understand their journey with their new dentures.
The study will collect data on the challenges both dental professionals and patients face and examine the process of fitting the denture along with any adjustments. The researchers will specifically focus on the social practices involved in wearing the denture. These data will enable the study to examine how expectations of the dentist and patient are framed (including oral hygiene advice given and expectations on performance of the denture in everyday life). This information is valuable because it is expected that the initial framing of the denture will have an impact on subsequent patient evaluations of their experience with their denture.
Professor Chris Deery, the Dean of the Dental School where the Sheffield team is based, welcomes this new project and observes: “Dentures restore both function and dignity to people who have lost teeth, but they often struggle to adapt to living with these invaluable devices. This impactful study builds on our previous research on ageing and the lifecourse, where tooth loss and the wearing of dentures has a very significant impact on people and their quality of life.”
The research began on 1st September 2021 and will conclude in February 2023.
The research team includes Tom Broomhead, Research Associate, Professor Sarah Baker, Professor Nicolas Martin, Mr Bilal El-Dhuwaib and J Clarke, from the University of Sheffield, Dr Gerry McKenna, Queen's University Belfast and Dr Anousheh Alavi, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Research & Development.