LAUSR

OBJECTIVES The aim of this retrospective data collection study was to determine the effect size of dry mouth on the survival of restorations and teeth. METHODS The data were collected from the electronic patient files of City of Oulu Public Dental Services (Finland). Study population consisted of 71 dry mouth patients and 142 control patients. The survival of 3208 restorations were analyzed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves and multivariate Cox regression analysis with shared frailty for patients. Separate analyses were performed for the survival of the teeth. RESULTS The hazard ratio of restorations in dry mouth patients was 2.08 (95% CI: 1.65-2.63) compared to the control patients. For the dry mouth patients, the fixed prosthetic crowns outlasted composite fillings of all sizes, but the difference increased concomitantly with the filling size. The dry mouth patients had hazard ratio of 2.32 (95% CI: 1.56-3.47) for tooth extractions compared to the control patients. The teeth with fixed prosthetic crowns outlasted the teeth with direct restorative materials. CONCLUSIONS The survival time of restorations and teeth are severely shortened in patients with dry mouth. Especially the survival time of the large composites is short in dry mouth patients whereas fixed prosthetic crowns have acceptable survival time also in dry mouth patients. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE When informing a dry mouth patient on the expected survival of a restoration or tooth, one should take into account that dry mouth patients´ restorations and teeth have severely shortened survival time.