Oral health-related quality of life among home-dwelling older people with and without domiciliary care

Abstract

Objectives: The aim was to compare oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) between home-dwelling older people with and without domiciliary care when adjusted for gender, education, use of dental services and removable dental prostheses. Background: OHRQoL of home-dwelling older people with and without domiciliary care is a neglected area of research, with few studies having been conducted. Materials and Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted on the Finnish Health 2011 interview data. Home-dwelling participants (age ≥ 70) with or without domiciliary care were included (n = 758). OHRQoL was measured with the Oral Health Impact Profile questionnaire (OHIP-14) calculating three outcomes: prevalence of at least one impact reported: “occasionally,” “fairly often” or “very often” (OFoVo), severity as mean sum score and mean of the seven OHIP-14 dimensions. These were evaluated by use of domiciliary care using logistic and negative binomial regression analyses. Results: Domiciliary care clients tended to have poorer OHRQoL than non-clients (severity mean 4.33 vs 4.11, P =.057), especially men (6.71 vs 4.15, P =.027), and reported more psychological discomfort than non-clients (mean 1.10 vs 0.82, P =.039). The use of removable dental prostheses was the strongest predictor (OR 2.84, P