Saliva is necessary for the proper functioning of the intra oral prosthesis especially the removable ones. This is because of the fact that salivary film is must to create adhesion, cohesion, and surface tension that ultimately leads to the increased retention of the denture and improved satisfaction towards the prosthesis. Elderly patients are more susceptible to xerostomia due to increased use of certain medications. Due to the loss of lubricating property of saliva intra oral tissues tend to stick leading to dry, freckled, ulcerated and sore mucosa which is of major concern to the complete denture wearing patient. The aim of this study was to assess the relation between oral dryness score and denture satisfaction among elderly patients. The present study was conducted in Prosthodontics Department of Govt Dental College Srinagar, Kashmir, J&K. Patients wearing dentures for at least six months were invited to participate in study. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) with scores ranging from 0-100 was used to assess patient’s satisfaction and clinical oral dryness score was assessed using the criteria described by Osailan SM et al., with scores ranging from 0-10. Data was analysed with SPSS software (version-20) and Kendall’s tau-b correlation was used to determine the relationship between mean denture satisfactions and mean clinical oral dryness scores. A total of 200 participants were included in the study based on inclusion criteria. The mean score for aesthetics was 87.12±21.20, for chewing ability the mean score was 62.5±19.74 and for phonetics it was 61.25±20.61. When clinical dryness scores were recorded, 27% of the participants has no signs of dryness, 23% of them had dryness score one, 21% had score two, 13% of them had score three and so on. Strong negative correlation between VAS-scores and oral dryness scores was observed which signifies the importance of thorough intraoral assessment before prosthesis fabrication and patient education regarding the severity of this condition.
