Marking dentures in geriatric institutions. The relevance and appropriate methods

A modified light-cured denture identification technique

Removable dental prostheses are lost frequently or stolen in nursing homes. Dental personnel may not be routinely available to many nursing home residents to place identification labels, and nursing staff members are not trained to use traditional denture marking techniques. This article describes a modified simple marking technique that may be used by either dental personnel or nursing staff members. Using ordinary sandpaper, lead pencil or ball pen, art and craft brush, direct light, and a mono-poly sealer of 1 part heat-cured clear methylmethacrylate powder mixed with 10 parts of autopolymerizing clear orthodontic methylmethacrylate liquid, 26 dentures were labeled for 19 nursing home residents. The technique was quick, cheap, easily applied, nonirritating to mouth tissues, and permanent.

Simple methods for denture identification: a clinical trial

The persistence of identification marks applied to dentures with two spirit solvent based fibre tip pens and graphite pencil covered with an experimental and a proprietary sealant were studied under service conditions. In general, the marks applied with the pens were rapidly lost, but those covered with the sealants persisted satisfactorily. The experimental sealant performed slightly better than the proprietary product.

Denture identification--a simple approach

In order to find a denture identification method that could be rapidly applied to completed dentures, a variety of spirit pens and commercial and experimental sealants were investigated. The pens were generally rapidly removed by one or more abrasive, denture cleansing, antiseptic or mouthwash agent; the sealants exhibited greater longevity. An experimental sealant (acrylic polymer dissolved in chloroform) was found to be cheap, readily prepared, easily applied, very resistant to abrasion, unaffected by immersion denture cleansers, antiseptics and mouthwashes, to produce no more crazing on dentures than the other sealants investigated, and not to affect the transverse strength of acrylic resin.

Denture marking

Reluctance about the identification marking of dentures has been the result of high costs and technical marking problems. The ID band system described here is inexpensive, fast, and requires no expensive special equipment. Embedding the band in a suitable part of the denture provides fully legible, radiopaque, lasting evidence of the denture wearer's identity. Since 1981, all dentures made in Sweden have been legally required to be marked.