P39 Evaluation of patient oriented outcome using SF‐36 in halitosis therapy

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the patient oriented outcome of medical interventions, Medical Outcome Study Short Form‐36 (SF‐36) is a widely used, self‐administered questionnaire. The SF‐36 has eight dimensions of health status consisting of Physical Function (PF), Role‐ Physical (RP), Bodily Pain (BP), General Health (GH), Vitality (VT), SF (Social Function), Role‐ Emotion (RE) and Mental Health (MH). Furthermore, each dimensional score and two summary scores about physical and mental regions can be calculated by the algorithm. The aim of this study was to examine the application of SF‐36 to the clinical parameter of halitosis.Subjects and methods Seventy patients visiting our special clinic for halitosis were the subjects. In this study, we defined the healed persons as follows. They received our therapy two or more times, and the duration was over 2 months. After our therapy, they declared that the oral malodor of themselves could not bother them. In addition, they accepted to receive the general dental check‐up regularly after the initial therapeutic period. The SF‐36 was filled by the subjects at the first visit of our clinic and the first time of the regular check‐up. The content of our therapy was mainly involved measurement of oral malodor, supporting for oral self‐care, professional oral cleaning and counseling. All management concerning SF‐36 was performed according to the manual of SF‐36, version 1.2, Japanese edition.Results and discussion Among all 70 subjects, GH, VT, SF, RE, MH and mental summary scores were significantly lower than national averages. Among the healed persons (n = 17), only SF score significantly rose after receiving our therapy. These results suggest that the consciousness of the improvement in social function could be an important outcome of halitosis therapy. In conclusion, measuring health related QOL using SF‐36 might be useful for evaluating the efficacy of halitosis therapy.