Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) outcomes at the time of orthodontic appliance removal and three months into retention

Abstract

Background: Oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) has become an important measure of orthodontic treatment outcome. However, it is unclear how long OHRQoL benefits manifest themselves following the removal of the orthodontic appliances. Objectives: To investigate differences in OHRQoL recorded at the time of orthodontic appliance removal and three months into retention. Setting and sample: Described is a prospective outcome study of 59 consecutive participants treated in a hospital-based clinic between 2015 and 2018. The patients comprised three groups: those who received orthognathic surgery (N = 15), those who had an orofacial cleft (N = 30) and those who had no-surgery/no-cleft (N = 14). Each individual completed an age-specific OHRQoL questionnaire that categorised them as either an adolescent (N = 37) or an adult (N = 22) participant. Method: The OHRQoL questionnaires were completed at the time of appliance removal (T0) and again three months into retention (T1). The Child Perceptions Questionnaires (CPQ11-14-ISF8 and P-CPQ8) were used for adolescent participants and their parent/caregiver, respectively, while the short-form Oral Health Impact Questionnaire (OHIP-14) was used for the adults. Results: The OHIP-14, CPQ11-14-ISF8 and P-CPQ8 detected improvements in overall and domain scores between T0 and T1 for all patient groups. Moderate effect sizes (0.2–0.7) were observed in all the domain, overall and group mean scores. Conclusions: Post-treatment orthodontic OHRQoL outcomes improve over the three-month period following appliance removal. The use of these measures should be delayed beyond the immediate time of appliance removal to allow the benefits of orthodontic treatment to be appreciated. (Aust Orthod J 2020; 36: 20-26).