A Post-Implanto-Prosthetic Rehabilitation Study Regarding the Degree of Improvement in Patients' Quality of Life: A Before-After Study.

Abstract

Implant-prosthetic rehabilitation has the ability to improve the quality of life of patients, because, in addition to the role of restoring masticatory function, they also have many other benefits, such as restoring aesthetics or improving speech. This study aimed to analyze whether patients' quality of life was improved by implanto-prosthetic rehabilitation and which were the most important aspects. In this before-after study, we applied the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) questionnaire to analyze the degree to which complex implanto-prosthetic rehabilitation led or not to an increase in patients' quality of life. The present study was carried out at the level of a private medical center in a city in the central region of Romania and included patients who visited this medical center between January and June 2022 and who benefited from a complex implanto-prosthetic rehabilitation, with the total number of patients eligible for inclusion in the study being 116. Overall, an improvement in quality of life after implant-prosthetic rehabilitation was found. Patients' gender, age, or educational level did not significantly influence their responses. The network analysis offered an overview (intuitive visual representation) of the similarities but also the differences in the OHIP-14 item relationships in both situations: before and after oral rehabilitation. A better understanding of how patients perceive implanto-prosthetic rehabilitation and the aspects that influence this perception can lead to an improvement in their quality of life, increasing the addressability of this type of medical procedure.