Perfil de utilização de próteses totais em idosos e avaliação da eficácia de sua higienização

The pyramid of the Brazilian population has changed in the past few years because of the increase of life expectation when being born and, consequently to the aging population. Great part of the current senior population has gone through a essentially reparative dentistry, in which the extractions has been the main treatment procedure, reasons for which, the biggest part of this population either are users or need to use prostheses. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of its cleansing in the bacterial plaque control of superior complete denture prostheses procedures in a group of seniors. There were eighty individuals who participated in a group of Elders from Piacatu/SP. Interviews were made through questionnaires to draw the outlines of the usage of complete denture prostheses in two distinct periods of time. From a total of eighty participants, 72 were users of complete denture prostheses, e.g. 90% of the studied population, 47 of them, e.g. 65,27% are users of complete prostheses for more than twenty years, 32 (44, 44%) never had their prostheses replaced, and 53 (73,61%) never had any kind of difficulty when cleaning their prostheses. Concerning the index of bacterial plaque on theses prostheses, there was a slightly considerable improvement it compared theses two mensu-