Relationship of denture cast measurements to width of maxillary anterior teeth

When making complete dentures, clinicians may have difficulty with selection of properly sized denture teeth. The purpose of this study was to determine if there are specific measurements made on an edentulous cast that could be useful to clinicians for selection of proper maxillary anterior denture tooth width. Following Institutional Review Board approval, measurements were made on 50 maxillary and mandibular sets of complete denture casts and their marked and contoured occlusion rims and record bases consecutively submitted to a dental laboratory. The following 6 measurements were recorded for each set of casts: left mid-maxillary to right mid-maxillary, representing the distance between the respective residual ridge crest points adjacent to each canine eminence; left retromolar pad to right retromolar pad; incisive papilla to left hamular notch; incisive papilla to right hamular notch; left hamular notch to right hamular notch; and incisive papilla to vibrating line. These measurements were statistically compared with the control, the canine-to-canine distance as marked on the contoured maxillary occlusion rim to indicate the relaxed commissures. The casts were also classified as small, medium or large based upon the tooth width specified by the commercial mold guide for their respective canine-to-canine control measurement. The estimation bias was determined for each of the 6 measurements, and for those measurements for which the bias was significantly different from zero, a bias-correction was applied. St. Laurent's coefficient was used to describe the agreement between each (bias-corrected) measurement and the canine-to-canine control. A commercial guide was used to determine the accuracy of each of the 6 bias-corrected measurements in classifying denture teeth width as small, medium or large as compared to the same classification using the canine-to-canine control. The bias-corrected measurement from the left hamular notch mark to the right hamular notch mark, obtained by adding 10 mm, exhibited the greatest degree of agreement with the control. This measurement was also the only one of the 6 that correctly classified more than 50 of both the medium and large casts. None of the 6 measurements classified more than 30 of the small casts correctly. Of the 6 measurements considered here, the bias-corrected measurement from left hamular notch mark to right hamular notch mark was preferred for selecting denture teeth width.