Correlation analysis between oral health literacy and disease severity in patients with periodontitis

Abstract

Objective To analyze the correlation between oral health literacy and disease severity in patients with periodontitis and to understand the influencing factors for oral health literacy. Methods Totally 191 patients with periodontitis attending the outpatient or inpatient service of the Department of Stomatology, Peking University Third Hospital from January 2016 to January 2018 were selected. Their general information was collected, and the Oral Health Literacy Adults Questionnaire (OHL-AQ) was used to investigate their oral health literacy. The severity of their periodontitis was evaluated according to the indicators as recommended by the Center for Disease Control of the American Academy Periodontology (CDC-AAP) . The difference in oral health literacy between patients with different general information. SPSS 22.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation between oral health literacy and periodontitis severity. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to explore the influencing factors of oral health literacy. Results Totally 74 sustained mild periodontitis, 60 moderate periodontitis, and 57 severe periodontitis among the 191 patients with periodontitis. The OHL-AQ scores were (14.55±2.59) , (11.26±2.41) and (10.25±2.30) , respectively (F=31.705, P<0.01) . Correlation analysis showed that the severity of periodontitis was negatively correlated with oral health literacy (r=-0.692, P<0.01) . There were statistically significant differences in oral health literacy between patients with different age, educational background, monthly household income, occupation and marital status (F/t=6.054, 51.812, 49.936, 2.594, 2.107; P<0.05) . Multiple linear regression analysis showed that age, educational background and monthly household income were the influencing factors for oral health literacy (P<0.01) . Conclusions The severity of periodontitis can be ameliorated by improving the patients' oral health literacy. Age, educational background and monthly household income were the influencing factors for oral health literacy. Key words: Oral disease; Periodontitis; Health literacy; Severity; Correlation; Influencing factors