Purpose: To investigate the influence of lower vertical dimension construction on cerebral blood flow among patients with complete denture.
Methods: Ten edentulous patients were chosen and lower vertical dimension was constructed with complete denture. Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography was used to detect the average peak flow velocity, peak systolic velocity and end-diastolic peak flow velocity of the middle cerebral artery. The detection was performed before chewing, 10 minutes after chewing and 20 minutes after chewing, respectively. Before-after self control study was designed, and SPSS18.0 software package was used to analyze the data with independent samples t test and multiple comparisons and analysis of variance.
Results: There was no significant increase in cerebral blood flow before chewing, 10 minutes after chewing and 20 minutes after chewing in the experimental group, while blood flow velocity of the control group was significantly increased. The blood flow velocity of the experimental group 10 minutes after chewing was significantly lower than that of the control group, while no significant difference was found after chewing between the experimental group and control group 20 minutes.
Conclusions: No significant increase of cerebral blood flow is detected in patients whose vertical dimension are lower when restored with complete denture during mastication.