A Comparison of Denture Base Retention and Adaptation Between CAD/CAM and Conventional Fabrication Techniques

Purpose: To assess the retention and adaptation of milled and printed denture bases in comparison to conventional ones. Materials and Methods: A total of 24 completely edentulous patients were selected. For each patient, three maxillary denture bases were constructed according to different fabrication techniques, thus defining the three groups for comparison: group 1 consisted of denture bases constructed by a conventional technique, group 2 consisted of denture bases milled from prepolymerized blocks of PMMA, and group 3 consisted of denture bases fabricated by a 3D printing technique. A digital force gauge was used for measuring the retention of the denture bases intraorally, while Geomagic Control X 64 software was used to evaluate the adaptation of the denture bases with their corresponding master casts. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used for comparison among the groups, followed by pairwise comparison with post hoc Bonferroni correction. The significance level was set at a = .05. Results: Statistical analysis showed significant differences among the three groups regarding retention and adaptation. The highest values of retention and adaptation of denture bases were found in group 2 (milling group). Conclusion: Within the limitations of this study, the following could be concuded: milled denture bases demonstrated better retention and adaptation than the conventional heat-polymerized and printed denture bases, and the printed denture bases showed better adaptation but similar retention to conventional heat-polymerized denture bases. Int J Prosthodont 2023;36:469-478. doi: 10.11607/ijp.7193