Modified Mondays: "My teeth are fine - why do you ask?"

“Mrs. Jones? How are your teeth fitting? Just fine? Really? Feel ok?” This nice lady (with some really fun earrings) was convinced that her teeth fit “just fine”. We can see here with this little bit of a cookie (Lorna Doone, of course!) that her teeth are not fitting fine at all.

In an old study completed by a prosthodontist group, residents of a long term care facility were assessed for denture fit, with 90% judged to need a significant adjustment, with around 60% of those still saying that the fit of their denture was good or excellent. In general, denture fit is not something that goes bad overnight, so many wearers don’t realize the gradually developing problem.

Now, as we can see here in this clip, she manages to masticate the cookie perfectly well, given time. (Watch in the next couple weeks for a #MM on mastication). It’s also really interesting to know that outwardly, I couldn’t really see the denture problem. We don’t always think of using the MBS study to look at oral management of the bolus, but it really is the only way to look at this in real time.