The influence of dental biofilm on removable partial dentures: A literature review

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this literature review is to evaluate the influence of dental biofilm in patients with removable partial dentures. METHODS: A bibliographic survey was carried out based on articles indexed in the electronic databases: Cochrane, Google Scholar, Pubmed and Scielo. Articles from 2005 to 2021 in English and Portuguese were included, with the following terms: “dental biofilm” AND/OR “removable partial prosthesis” AND/OR “secondary caries” AND/OR “tooth loss” AND/OR periodontal disease. RESULTS: Results included 9 articles in this study. In studies that addressed the topic of hygiene, there seems to be a consensus that strategies that combined chemical and mechanical cleaning were more effective in combating biofilm on PPRs. The studies that performed microbiological analysis detected changes in the oral biofilm after making the prostheses, ranging from 30 days to 180 days. The main microorganisms found were Streptococcus spp., Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Peptostreptococcus anaerobius, Prevotella nigrescens, Tannerella forsythia and Candida albicans. Such microorganisms can cause caries, periodontitis and oral candidiasis. Other studies point to the incidence of denture stomatitis due to poor hygiene of PPRs. CONCLUSION: Thus, the dental biofilm can cause problems in the future misadaptation of PPRs, which can lead to the pathological evolution of the teeth due to periodontal disease and association of microorganisms. In addition, it can be noticed problems caused by surface roughness in prostheses by the excess of adhered biofilm.