ORIGINAL ARTICLE Dental functional status with and without tooth replacement in a Chinese adult population

Abstract The objective of this study is to investigate the prevalence of missing teeth and prosthodontic replacements in a Chinese adult population using a hierarchical dental functional classification system. A total of 1,462 dentate subjects over 40 years from Shandong Province, China were included and categorized in the functional classifica-tion system with and without tooth replacements. Depend-ing on replacements, subjects could be reclassified (promoted) to categories reflecting higher functionality. “Promotions ” were considered indicators for prosthodontic effectiveness. Homogeneities after dichotomization into functional categories appeared to be moderate to good. In the “≥10 teeth in each jaw ” branch, mean number of teeth and posterior occluding pairs were 27.93±2.74 and 7.10± 1.94, respectively. In the branch “<10 teeth in each jaw,” these figures were 16.17±5.54 and 1.49±1.45. Fixed dental prostheses (FDPs) added on average 3.5 artificial teeth; 46 % of subjects with FDP promoted to a higher functional level. For removable dental prostheses (RDPs), these numbers were 8.5 % and 79%, respectively. Promotion value per tooth added was significantly higher for FDPs. The classification system was able to quantify the effec-tiveness of teeth replacements. It was shown that RDPs were more effective when higher numbers of teeth were replaced, while FDPs were more effective per artificial tooth added