Impact of chronic oral mucosal diseases on quality of life in Kurdish patients, Preliminary observations in Sulaimani city

Abstract

Chronic oral mucosa disorders are often recurrent or painful with a long standing course that affects the quality of patients’ life. Scoring such effect with a predominance of oral health– specific quality-of-life measures currently used to a limited extent in oral medicine practice.
 Objectives: to measure the impact of chronic oral mucosal diseases on quality of life in Kurdish patients. Evaluate the efficacy of the discipline-specific quality-of-life measure developed in the field of oral medicine.
 Patients and Methods: Fifty patients with different chronic oral mucosal diseases participated in this study and filled the questionnaire.
 Results: The quality-of-life mean score significantly differed among various chronic oral mucosal diseases. Nevertheless, there were no significant differences in medication nor patient support. Behçet’s disease had the highest value (3.36). They had a significantly high score for pain, functional limitation, social and emotional domains. Positive, simple–count score was only significantly differentiating between recurrent aphthous ulceration and recurrent herpes labialis (24 versus 9.62). Chronic oral mucosal diseased patients have moderate difficulty in carrying out daily oral hygiene (mean score 2.34). They felt discomfort with certain food features (mean score 2.02). Also, they were not satisfied with their treatment (mean score 2.5) and were worry from no curing (mean score 2.09). They had bothering from the unpredictability of their oral condition (mean score 2.04). They were moderately satisfied with the level of support and understanding shown to them by family (mean score 2.2). Fortunately, chronic oral mucosal diseases did not disrupt their social activities and did not hold them to the feeling of isolation (mean score 0.98 and 0.74 respectively).
 Conclusion: Dentists should pay particular attention to mucosal-diseased patients because they are likely to experience oral impacts on daily performances. They should also consider the 26 questions included in the chronic OMD-QOL system for better understanding those patients’ need.