Quality of life and satisfaction of users of total tissue-supported and implant-supported prostheses in the municipality of Macapá, Brazil

The objective of this study was to evaluate and compared the satisfaction and quality of life of edentulous users of total tissue-supported and total implant-supported prostheses in Macapá, Amapá, Brazil. Two hundred ninety-nine users of total tissue-supported prostheses and 48 users of total implant-supported prostheses were surveyed using two questionnaires: The Oral Health Impact Profile-14Br and a visual analog scale of satisfaction. The means and standard deviations were used to characterize the quantitative variables and absolute and relative frequencies were used to characterize the qualitative variables as well as certain quantitative variables. When evaluating satisfaction according to the type of prosthesis, users of implant-supported prostheses were 100% satisfied with both upper and lower prostheses. Among users of tissue-supported prostheses, 90% reported being satisfied with the upper prosthesis, while 56% demonstrated dissatisfaction with the lower prosthesis. All users of implant-supported prostheses reported good quality of life; by contrast, 5% of users of tissue-supported prostheses reported good quality of life, while 73% reported a reasonable quality of life and 22% a poor quality of life. This is the first study on this topic in Amapá. The study results are clinically relevant for accurately determining the quality of life of these prosthesis users.