Effects of Dental Health on the Quality of Life of Elderly Patients

Abstract

Aim: Oral health can affect the quality of life (QoL), and the oral health impact profile-14 (OHIP-14) index utility to assess this impact.
Objective: To study the impact of oral health on quality of life of patients older than 50 years, verifying, preliminarily, the reliability of the OHIP-14 index.
Methods: We studied the internal consistency of the index by applying the alpha-Cronbach coefficient. The OHIP-14 index was obtained by the additive method, and the patients were divided according to gender, age and education level.
Results: Considering all the issues that make up the OHIP-14 index, good internal consistency was obtained. The homogeneity of the questions in the index, it was confirmed that condition, since the difference between the value of the total Cronbach’s alpha-factor and issues was less than 0.03. The values of the intraclass correlation show the stability of their items.
Conclusion: The OHIP-14 index was consistent and proved to be there relatively high impact of oral health on QoL of patients, with a predominance of physical pain in its components “feel bothered to feed” and “feel pain in the mouth” as well as the components of the psychological impairment.