QUALITY OF LIFE ASSESSMENT IN PATIENTS AFTER PROSTHETIC TREATMENT USING THE DENTAL PROFILE QUESTIONNAIRE

Abstract

Introduction. Quality of life, objective assessment criterion of which is level of human’s needs and interests satisfaction, is primarily connected with health status. This is why so called “health-related quality of life” is closely associated with patient’s well-being and satisfaction of those aspects of life, that are impacted by disease or treatment process. During the study of oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL, 1996), most authors take the OHIP (Oral Health Impact Profile, G.D. Slade, A.J. Spencer, 1994) approach as a basis, such as OHIP-EDENT (Short Version). Due to the fact, other methods of quality of life assessment are not widely used in dental practice, and it is important to develop new approaches in quality of life study, combined with prosthetic treatment results, considering the appropriate indicators of oral health.
 The aim of this study is to conduct a personalized dental health indicators assessment reflecting patients’ quality of life after restoration of mandibular dental arch with overdentures.
 Materials and methods. Main group (MG) comprised 23(54,8%) female patients and 19 (45,2%) males ones (n=42) aged 56-89, whom mandibular overdentures with ball attachments were constructed. Comparison group (CG) consisted of 17(47,2%) women and 19(52.8 %) men (n=36) aged 57-76, who have been using first-timely constructed complete removable mandibular dentures for three years. After use of the Dental Profile Questionnaire, and after detailed anamnestic study, the number of patients’ of both groups responses about possible unfavourable symptoms in use of dental prostheses and the mean value of frequency of those symptoms (1- sometimes, 2- often, 3- mainly) were estimated. Statistical processing of data obtained was performed by standard methods of variation statistics using Statistica 6.0 Program.
 Results and discussion. The subjective component of our treatment results evaluation of in-depth analysis, after all reflected in extended description of the clinical cases in MG patients development of the current disease — significant loss of teeth with mandibular single remaining teeth / roots (K08.9 according to ICD-10) indicated that quality of life level of these individuals has a close connection with their oral health. According to the overall subjective evaluation of prosthetic treatment results after answering 14 patient’s oral health- related questions, the number of reports of adverse events was markedly different -22.7% in MG patients after 12 months of observation vs. 77.3% of CG patients, and statistically significant (p <0.05) - the decrease in the average score of their frequency.
 Thus, it can be argued, that in the MG patients satisfaction with the treatment results, that reflected the quality of life level, associated with oral health, was notably higher, than in the CG patiens. So, the dentures were identified applicable (pp.1-6) by 90.9% of MG patients vs. 54.6% of CG patients, accompanying signs (pp.7-12) were positively evaluated by 90.1% vs. 69.0%, and subjective well-being (pp.13-14) was acheived in 90.5% vs. 63.9% of patients in these groups.
 Conclusions. Results of the research have defined the improvement of all the 14 studied oral health indicators in patients of the main group after 1 year of the examination compared with the previous data after 1 and 6 months of mandibular overdentures use. Patients’ satisfaction with treatment results, reflecting the quality of life level, associated with oral health, confirms the higher efficiency of overdentures use compared to complete removable dentures in mandibular dental arch restoration.