Partial Denture Template
Hub for removable partial dentures on Form 26. The chairside sheets live in one file per material — this note is the decision tree that gets you to the right one, and the place where the cross-material comparisons and the stage-by-stage “does this case need it?” criteria live.
Two signatures required
Form 26 is the reconstructive phase. You need two signatures — the prosth specialist and the clinic coordinators. No aesthetic work goes on this form.
Pick your sheet
| Material | Sheet | One-line case for it |
|---|---|---|
| Acrylic, mucosa-supported | Acrylic RPD Clinical Sequence Template | A mouth that is still changing — questionable prognosis, further extractions likely, teeth needed while treatment runs. Easy to add to. |
| Cast cobalt-chromium | Chrome-Cobalt RPD Clinical Sequence Template | A favourable, stable dentition. Rigid, thin, less tissue coverage, design-controlled support and bracing. |
Related: PFM Survey Crown Template for an abutment crown contoured to receive the denture, and Crown Template for the fixed-work hub.
Acrylic versus cobalt-chromium
| Acrylic | Cobalt-chromium | |
|---|---|---|
| Support | Tissue-supported — load goes to the mucosa rather than to periodontally weak or mobile abutments | Tooth-supported or tooth-tissue supported, through rests on prepared seats |
| Rigidity | More flexible | Rigid |
| Bulk | Bulkier; needs adequate acrylic thickness or it fractures | Thin |
| Tissue coverage | Greater coverage | Less coverage, and better access for cleaning |
| Design control | Clasp positions and teeth to replace; wrought-wire clasps bent and added after processing | Full framework design — rests, clasps, connectors, guide planes, indirect retention — cast to a surveyed cast |
| Support and bracing of remaining teeth | Limited | A stated advantage; the design braces the dentition |
| Adding teeth later | Easy to modify and easy to add to | Cannot accommodate tooth loss well |
| Cost and time | Cheaper, simpler, fewer visits | Greater commitment to design, mouth preparation and lab stages |
| Chairside appointments | 4 to 6, two of them conditional | 6 to 8, two conditional — plus a survey-and-design step done at the desk, not at the chair |
| Retentive undercut engaged | 0.75 mm, wrought stainless-steel wire | 0.25 mm cast cobalt-chromium (cast gold 0.50 mm) |
"Acrylic" does not mean "temporary"
A well-made acrylic denture can be a definitive prosthesis. It simply covers more tissue than a framework does. Acrylic is also the right interim answer while emergencies, caries, periodontal disease and extraction decisions are being worked through — but the two uses are not the same thing, and choosing acrylic is not by itself an admission that the case is provisional.
There are no partial denture survival figures in this vault
Nothing in the RPD lecture series, the Reference procedures or the CDP lectures gives a survival or failure rate for either material — no 5-year or 10-year figure, no fracture rate for acrylic, no framework failure rate. Do not quote one. (The only prosthesis survival data in the vault is the indirect-versus-direct restoration comparison on the crown and onlay sheets, which has nothing to do with dentures.)
Diagnose before you design
The material choice follows the prognosis of the remaining dentition, not the Kennedy class. The first question is not “what denture should I make?” but “what is happening in this mouth?” — the periodontal, restorative, endodontic, occlusal, anatomical, functional and patient-related picture, and what the patient’s previous prosthesis tells you about tolerance, tooth position and how much coverage they will accept.
Mobility is a finding, not a prognosis. Ask why the tooth is mobile — periodontal disease, trauma from occlusion, periapical infection, traumatic injury, a pathological jaw lesion — and whether that cause is controlled. A tooth mobile from occlusal trauma may be perfectly sound once the trauma is removed.
Ask whether each tooth is useful to the design, not simply whether it is good or bad. A restorable tooth with a good prognosis may still come out if it does not fit the plan or it blocks a balanced denture. A questionable tooth may be kept, and extra measures justified, if it is a strategic terminal abutment.
What the periodontal stage and grade actually tell you here
Stage I and Stage II cases, particularly Grade A, present less of a dilemma when choosing between acrylic and cobalt-chromium. Stage III and Stage IV, particularly Grade B and Grade C, require more careful consideration: a Stage IV patient carries a higher risk of losing more teeth, so a definitive denture may be followed shortly afterwards by further extractions, and a higher-risk patient may warrant a transitional approach until the condition is stable.
That is as far as the lecture goes, and this note goes no further. There is no stage-to-material rule — the call is yours, on the whole case.
The decision is shared: biology, prognosis, maintenance, cost, time and the patient’s expectations. The patient is part of the design.
Which steps does this case need?
Cobalt-chromium runs the full pathway; the acrylic one is where steps get dropped — and the criteria below are what decide it. Neither pathway counts the survey and design as an appointment: on the cobalt-chromium sheet that is desk work on the articulated casts, reviewed with the supervisor before any preparation starts. At OCHWA the definitive impression and its special tray are taken as standard on both pathways; the impression criteria are kept here because they still tell you how much the impression has to achieve.
| Step | May be light | Strongly indicated |
|---|---|---|
| Secondary / definitive impression | Short bounded saddle; single missing tooth. A very good primary alginate can record a tooth-supported bounded saddle | Kennedy I or II free-end saddle; long Kennedy IV; large tissue-supported Kennedy III — full vestibular extension and maximum tissue support are needed, and the primary impression does not record them |
| Border moulding | Tooth-supported bounded saddle where the base extension is not doing the work | Kennedy I or II free-end saddle; long Kennedy IV; large tissue-supported saddle; posterior maxillary extension into functionally relevant soft tissue |
| Recorded MMR on a base and rim | Kennedy III where the casts hand-articulate on stable tripod contact | Kennedy I or II free-end saddle; long Kennedy IV; unstable occlusal stops; any change in vertical dimension. Always essential on the cobalt-chromium pathway, recorded on the verified framework |
| Tooth try-in | Single straightforward tooth, good neighbouring references, stable occlusion, minimal aesthetic risk | Multiple teeth; aesthetic zone; uncertain tooth position; occlusal uncertainty; altered vertical dimension; clinician or student uncertainty |
| Preliminary tooth arrangement (Co-Cr only) | Straightforward case with a predictable tooth position | Uncertain anterior tooth position; Class II or III interarch relationship; limited prosthetic space; teeth to sit labial to the ridge; framework to be extended labially to support them; vertical dimension being changed |
Two rules cut across all of it:
- Always take a bite registration. It is quick, and you can decide afterwards whether you use it. The test is not “can the patient bite together?” but “can the technician articulate these casts predictably?” The patient’s joints and muscles stabilise a free-end case in the mouth; rigid casts on a bench have nothing holding them. Put the casts together, check for rocking and sliding, and count the contacts — three stable contacts (one in each posterior region, one anterior) may do, four are better.
- Where a stage is dropped, its job moves onto the lab slip. A direct finish means the shade, the mould and the shade photograph have to be right the first time. Hand articulation means the slip has to ask whether the casts articulate predictably, and ask for a hard record base and rim if they do not.
Impressions, trays and blockout
What OCHWA actually stocks
The PVS is Imprint 4 — heavy body, regular body and light body. Medium body alone, heavy plus light, or medium plus light are all defensible; the combination is clinician preference, not a rule. Do not mix generations of the product, because the setting times may not match (Imprint 4 with Imprint 4, not with Imprint 3). Alginate is the other common material. Polyether is used rarely.
Choose the impression material before you write the tray prescription, because it decides the tray design.
| Impression material | Tray | Spacer |
|---|---|---|
| Alginate | Perforated | 3 mm |
| PVS | Non-perforated | 2 mm |
| Polyether | Non-perforated | 2 mm |
The spacer is wax laid on the stone cast before the tray is made; without it there is nowhere for the impression material to sit. Tissue stops are extensions that contact selected teeth and stop the tray sinking into the tissues — useful while you are still learning how much pressure a tray needs, and skippable once you are not.
The prescription the lab actually needs
“Dear Lab, please fabricate upper and lower special trays as follows: maxillary perforated special tray with 3 mm spacer for an alginate impression; mandibular non-perforated special tray with 2 mm spacer for a PVS impression, with tissue stops.”
Name the arch, the material, perforated or not, the spacer, whether tissue stops are wanted, and what the impression is for. “Dear Lab, please make special tray” gives you no standing to criticise the design that comes back.
Light body goes where the detail matters: rest seats, guide planes, prepared tooth surfaces, lingual plate contact and palatal plate contact. On a routine acrylic denture it is not always necessary; on a cobalt-chromium case the framework is cast to those surfaces, so it is.
Blockout
Spot the risk first: black triangles, open embrasures and large interdental spaces; gingival recession; tipped teeth; undercuts beneath a bridge or pontic; mobile or periodontally compromised teeth. Block out with periphery wax (the easiest), a light-cure gingival barrier, PTFE tape, Oraseal or a temporary restorative material.
Block from the buccal, so the lingual extension is preserved. The goal is only to stop material passing buccally to lingually and locking between the surfaces — it does not have to encircle the tooth.
| Impression material | Blockout needed |
|---|---|
| Alginate | Generally none — it flexes out |
| Heavy-body PVS | Interproximally, where locking is possible |
| Polyether | Always, wherever undercuts are present |
A locked polyether impression is a genuine emergency
Set polyether locks into undercuts. Getting one out can mean removing a tooth with the impression, sectioning the tray, or cutting the material while it is still in the mouth, with a real risk of injuring the lips and soft tissues.
Judging the impression
Assess it yourself before you ask a supervisor whether it is acceptable, and judge it against what the denture has to do.
| Tooth-supported / bounded saddle | Free-end / long saddle | |
|---|---|---|
| What must be recorded | Rest seats and guide planes; saddle anatomy; path-of-insertion information and the relevant tooth surfaces | Abutment teeth; the entire denture-bearing area; buccal and lingual extension; retromolar pad or tuberosity; functional peripheral form |
A defect is judged by where it falls. A drag between two teeth that no part of the denture will occupy may be perfectly acceptable; a major defect in the retromolar pad or the buccal shelf is not.
Digital bite registration
| More predictable | More challenging |
|---|---|
| Short bounded saddle | Long edentulous span |
| Stable teeth | Free-end saddle |
| Good access and moisture control | Mobile or displaceable tissues |
| Reliable occlusal landmarks | Functional border required |
| Minimal tissue displacement | Limited access, or difficult tongue and cheek control |
| Few stable occlusal landmarks |
The scan can look beautiful and the bite can still be wrong. A scanner will produce a bite record even where its algorithms cannot establish the true occlusion, which is exactly what happens when posterior support is missing — so validate every digital record clinically in the scanner’s contact-only mode. If you commit to a digital workflow, stay in it rather than alternating between scans, printed casts and conventional records.
This corrects the earlier sheets
An earlier version of the acrylic template routed Kennedy I and II cases to a digital bite registration. That is backwards: a free-end saddle is the hard case for a digital record, not the indication for one. Both sheets now follow the table above.
Undercut depth by clasp alloy
| Alloy | Undercut engaged |
|---|---|
| Cast cobalt-chromium | 0.25 mm |
| Cast gold | 0.50 mm |
| Wrought stainless-steel wire | 0.75 mm |
This is the number that ties the three sheets together. A cobalt-chromium clasp is stiff, so it engages the shallowest undercut; wrought wire is flexible, so it takes the deepest — which is why an acrylic partial’s wrought-wire clasps can be adjusted by bending them, and why a cast retentive arm cannot be adjusted in its terminal third at all. When a survey crown is built to receive a clasp, the undercut is built into the crown to the figure for the framework alloy (PFM Survey Crown Template).
Laboratory prescriptions
The technician has no clinical context and works strictly from what you send. Give clear, concise, point-form, stepwise instructions, and do not assume anyone will guess your intent — if an MMR goes in with a 5 mm overjet, the teeth come back set to a 5 mm overjet.
The difference a prescription makes
Inadequate: “Dear Lab, please make special tray.”
Appropriate: “Dear Lab, please fabricate upper and lower special trays as follows: maxillary perforated special tray with 3 mm spacer for an alginate impression; mandibular non-perforated special tray with 2 mm spacer for a PVS impression, with tissue stops.”
Do not criticise the laboratory’s design later if the prescription never communicated the requirement. Both examples are verbatim from L5 RPD Hindawi.
Every slip carries: the date, the patient details, and the return date — entered at least one day before the patient’s appointment. Then the job summary, the models required, the specific materials requested, the construction details, any enclosed design drawing, decontamination confirmation, the tutor’s signature and D-number, and your contact details.
The OCHWA process around it: the slip is a Titanium eForm, and only the dates are editable on screen — print it to mark the odontogram and write the requirements. Register every job on LabMagic, keep proof of submission in case a form goes missing, and submit the Removable Prosthodontics and Laboratory Stages (Progress Monitor) with the slip. Every stage on that monitor is signed before the next one starts. Work goes to the OHCWA clinical laboratory; turnaround runs to about 15 days for some prosthetic work, and a job returned for correction doubles the wait.
| Acrylic slip | Cobalt-chromium slip | |
|---|---|---|
| Models | Master cast | Master cast plus the study cast carrying the framework design |
| Records | Bite registration | Bite registration; tripod reference points for the path of insertion |
| Clasps | Clasp positions | Clasp position and type for each abutment |
| Framework detail | — | Major connector type; rest locations; guide planes; indirect retention; finish lines; mesh extension; relief; bead lines |
| Teeth | Teeth to be replaced; shade | Teeth to be replaced; shade |
| Where the clasp instruction goes | On the processing slip — wrought wire is added after processing | On the framework slip — the clasps are cast into it |
Two things the technician will not add unless you ask
Bead lines along the borders of a maxillary major connector, fading out 6 mm from the gingival margins — mandibular connectors take none at all. And relief under a mandibular major connector: about 1.5 mm for Kennedy I, II and IV, little or none for Kennedy III. Relief also goes under the mesh, leaving a window for the tissue stops. Sources: L5 Major and Minor Connectors, L9 Clinical Sequence.
Worked example slips for each dispatch point are on the two chairside sheets — Acrylic RPD Clinical Sequence Template and Chrome-Cobalt RPD Clinical Sequence Template. Beyond the special-tray example above, the vault holds no worked RPD prescription wording, so those examples are constructed from the field lists in L9 Clinical Sequence, Laboratory Prescriptions and Treatment Planning session 1. Treat them as models to adapt.
Sources and their weight
- L5 RPD Hindawi and L5 Partial Dentures are the authority for this hub. They are the same DMD3S2 Clinical Dental Practice lecture — Dr Ahmad Hendawi and Dr Sheryl Teo, prosthodontics — recorded from two angles: the first is the OCR of the slide deck plus the lecture audio, the second is the contemporaneous note. Where they and the DMD3S1 series disagree, these win. The stage models on both chairside sheets, the conditional-stage criteria, the tray prescriptions, the blockout guidance and the framework troubleshooting all come from here.
- L9 Clinical Sequence supplies the laboratory-side detail and the altered-cast technique, and it is the source of the increased-vertical-dimension pathway that Hindawi does not cover.
- L8 Mouth preparation for RPD is the source of the control-phase and biomechanical-phase split. L6 Dental Surveyor and L7 Survey and Design give the undercut depths. L1 Introduction to RPD through L5 Major and Minor Connectors cover the components.
- The Imprint 4 stock list is OCHWA-specific and comes from the lecture note, not from a manufacturer’s catalogue. Check the dispensary before you plan around it.
- The reference-side prose versions of both pathways are Clinical Sequence for Partial Dentures and Clinical Sequence for Acrylic Partial Dentures. They still carry the older visit-numbered structure.