Comparing oral health-related quality of life (ohip-14) and masticatory efficiency with complete denture treatment

Abstract

Objective: To measure impact of oral health in complete denture wearers and its effects on masticatory efficiency with new complete dentures over the period of three months. Study Design: Experimental study design. Place and Duration of study: Department of Prosthodontics, Bahria University Medical and Dental College, Karachi, Pakistan from September 2019 to December-2019. Methodology: Oral health impact profile (OHIP) was used to measure the oral health impact; and chewing gum method was used to measure the masticatory efficiency in this study. All participants were old denture wearers having the experience of at least 3 years and requiring new set of complete dentures. A total of 31 patients were asked to chew the gum from the routine site of mastication for 20 seconds. The weight reduction corresponded to the masticatory efficiency. The OHIP-14 score and masticatory efficiency was recorded at baseline and after three months of complete denture treatment. The data was analysed on SPSS version 23. Results: The average values of masticatory efficiency were significantly reduced from median (IQR) value 1.20 (1.20-1.30) to 0.90 (0.70-0.90), respectively (p <0.001). There was a moderate positive correlation for physical pain and disability (0.407 and 0.455) at baseline and strong positive correlation (0.771 and 0.825) after 3 months of complete denture treatment with p-value <0.001 on OHIP-14 scale. Conclusion: Statistically significant improvement was observed in both quality of life and masticatory efficiency after 3 months of treatment with conventional complete dentures. Masticatory efficiency was highly correlated with all subscales of OHIP-14 after treatment.