Evaluation of oral health education programs for oral health of individuals with visual impairment: An umbrella review.

Abstract

To exemplify, summarize and critically appraise the systematic reviews (SRs) that evaluated different oral health education (OHE) interventions in individuals with visual impairment (VI). Six electronic databases were searched for SRs evaluating OHE programs in individuals with VI. The internal validity of the included SRs was evaluated using the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews-2 (AMSTAR-2) tool. The degree of overlap of the primary studies in the included SRs was calculated using the "corrected covered area (CCA)" approach. Seven SRs were included in this umbrella review that included 30 primary studies with a CCA of 26% (very high overlap). Six of the included SRs were assessed to have critically low confidence in the results, whereas only one had moderate confidence. A combination of various OHE methods for individuals with VI might be better than using one method alone to improve oral hygiene. There is no conclusive evidence that one OHE method is superior to others. However, the evidence of OHE in improving the outcomes related to dental trauma or caries is inconclusive. Furthermore, it appears that most of the evaluations of oral health programs come from limited parts of the world, and data from many other regions is lacking.