Psychosocial oral health‐related quality of life impact: A systematic review

BACKGROUND: Psychosocial wellbeing is an important determinant for patients' oral health‐related quality of life (OHRQoL). Psychosocial impact (PI), together with the dimensions Oral Function, Orofacial Pain and Orofacial Appearance, has been proposed to cover the different areas of OHRQoL. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to collect further scientific support for the new four‐dimensional structure of OHRQoL. This study is one out of a series of four and focuses on the PI in patients with dental anxiety, oral cancer and periodontitis (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42017064033). METHODS: Five databases (Pubmed (Medline), EMBASE, Cochrane, CINAHL and PsycINFO) were electronically searched on 8 June 2017 and updated on 14 January 2019, to identify the studies that measure OHRQoL using the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) for oral health conditions. In this review, studies were included if the mean/median domain scores from OHIP‐14 or OHIP‐49 were available for patients with dental anxiety, oral cancer or periodontitis. The score of the handicap domain from the OHIP was used to assess patients` PI. The handicap domain includes 6 items for OHIP‐49 with a domain score ranging from 0 to 24 and 2 items for OHIP‐14 with a domain score ranging from 0 to 8. For comparison between the 2 versions of the OHIP, the domain score of OHIP‐49 was conversed into a 0 to 8 metric. The domain scores of the included studies were then pooled, separately for each of the included dental disorders. RESULTS: A total of 2104 records were identified based on the search strategy. After screening of titles and abstracts, 1607 articles were reviewed in full text. Twenty‐three articles met the inclusion criteria for this review and were included in the study. The 23 articles contained 3884 patients, grouped in 30 patient populations and 42 patient samples. The pooled mean scores of PI for dental anxiety, oral cancer and periodontitis were 3.2, 1.9 and 0.8, respectively, on the 0 to 8 metric. CONCLUSION: This review provides standardised information about the OHRQoL impact for three dental disorders as a model for the PI dimension. Dental anxiety tends to show the strongest effect on the PI dimension, while periodontitis tends to show the weakest effect on the PI dimension. Future studies need to confirm whether the reported differences in PI scores between the three dental disorders are statistically significant.