Towards Better Understanding of OHRQoL in Edentulous Patients

WHO goals for oral health 2020 target to reduce the number of edentulous persons and to increase the individuals with functional dentition. Health Impact Profile is an instrument including conceptual dimensions of OHRQoL (3) giving greater weight to psychological and behavioral outcomes. Our aim was to assess oral health impacts related to the Oral Health Impact Profile in edentulous patients with complete dentures from Bialystok, Poland. The participants were recruited from two randomly chosen dental clinics in Bialystok, which constituted 11.1% of accessible public dental clinics. The inclusion criteria were: a public dental service, a prosthodontist, and patients with complete dentures. Participants consecutively filled in the questionnaire during their dental checkup. The participation was anonymous, voluntary. Patients unable to fill in the questionnaire were excluded from the survey. The Polish version of the OHIP-14 was used (4). The values of Cronbach's alpha (0.969) were calculated to assess the internal consistency for the whole score and for particular items removed. The statistical analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0 software. Statistical hypotheses were verified at P<0.05. The final sample consisted of 100 edentate people. The age ranged from 49 to 97 yr, (mean age 72.65+/-9.25). Table 1 shows mean values of the total OHIP-14 and its dimensions in relation to different variables. The age was significantly associated with the functional limitation dimension. Level of education, dry mouth, chewing ability and self-rated oral health indicated significant association with total OHIP-14 and its dimensions. In table 2 chewing problems, dry mouth and self-rated oral health were significantly associated with the OHIP-14. Participants who reported chewing problems had a 6.17 times greater odds of having the OHIP-14 score above the median than those without chewing problems.