Can dental treatments improve oral health-related quality of life? A systematic review

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) is a practically new but rapidly growing approach. The concept of OHRQoL can become a tool to explain and shape the state of clinical practice. This study was aimed to do a systematic review about the impacts of different dental treatments on OHRQoL. METHODS: We searched the databases of PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus, Cochrane, and Thomson Reuters Web of Science up to January 2018 with the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) keywords: “Intervention”, “Management”, “Improvement”, “Impact”, “Change” in combination with “Dentistry” AND “Oral health-related quality of life”. The reviewers screened the identified publications in three steps according to title, abstract, and full text; thereafter, they extracted all the related data in screened articles and finally classified it according to the field of dental treatment. Extracted data were saved in Excel software. RESULTS: Finally, 22 articles were enrolled in the review and based on the type of dental treatment were categorized into three groups: implant and prosthesis, oral surgery, and periodontics and aesthetic; overall, in 72.7% of the studies, improvement of OHRQoL was considered. CONCLUSION: The majority of used dental treatments have shown improvement of OHRQoL in studied patients.