Evaluation of Effect of Astringent on Oral Mucosa as a Non-surgical Preprosthetic Treatment Modality in Edentulous Patients: An In Vivo Study.

Preprosthetic treatments are advocated in edentulous patients to enhance the denture bearing areas for good denture support. Most of the times the preprosthetic treatments are considered only in a surgical way. Ideally every edentulous patient undergoing complete denture treatment needs a non-surgical preprosthetic treatment. So that, the denture bearing area will be properly prepared before the denture construction. The present study was conducted on thirty completely edentulous male patients who had visited to our Institute for the treatment. Each patient was asked to massage with astringent gel on the denture bearing mucosa over a 4 weeks period. Exfoliative cytology was used to collect the surface cells from the palatal mucosa. First scrape was taken before the stimulation treatment was started. The second and third scrape was taken after the stimulation treatment with astringent gel for each patient. In this way total 90 scrapes were made and the each smear was stained with the Papanicolaou's technique to examine under light microscope. About 100 cells were counted from each stained smear. The number of parabasal cells, intermediate cells and superficial cells were recorded to calculate the degree of keratinization. Statistical analysis was performed. A significant difference (p < 0.001) in keratinization levels was found. The mean percentage of superficial cells before the stimulation treatment was 79.80 %; this percentage was gradually increased to 84.60 and 90.57 % after the 2  and 4 weeks period of stimulation treatment respectively with astringent gel.