Oral Health-Related quality of life in Portuguese undergraduate students

Abstract

Background: The Oral Health-related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) is an essential part of health and wellbeing that aims to assess the impact of oral health on aspects of personal and social life. This investigation aimed to study the OHRQoL in undergraduate students and relate it to sociodemographic, academic behaviours, oral health behaviours, the presence of oral problems and self-perception of oral health.

Material and methods: The study target-population consisted of the undergraduate students attending the University of Lisbon (UL). Data collection was carried out through an online questionnaire which included self-reported sociodemographic and academic characteristics, behaviours and oral health status, and the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14). Descriptive statistics were performed, and the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used (α=0.05).

Results: The sample included 933 students, aged between 18 and 48 years old (mean=21.22 / SD=3.11). The global mean value of OHIP-14 was 5.98 (SD=6.71) and 89.8% of the students presented OHIP-14 values between 0 and 14. Psychological discomfort and physical pain were the dimensions of OHIP-14 with the greatest impact on OHRQoL. Most of the students brushed their teeth twice a day (79.7%) with fluoridated toothpaste (90.8%) and perceived their oral health as "good" (56.3%). Several aspects were significantly related (p<0.05) to a worse OHRQoL, namely, being of African origin, courses not related to health, changes for worse in oral hygiene habits after entering university, higher consumption frequency of cariogenic foods or, going to oral health appointments in urgent situations, not having oral health appointments for economic reasons, history of oral health problems, self-reported oral problems and negative self-perception of oral health status.

Conclusions: Most UL students had a good OHRQoL, adequate oral health behaviours and a good self-reported state of oral health. Key words:Oral health-related quality of life, OHIP-14, Oral health behaviours, Self-reported oral health, University students.

Figure 1

Distribution of OHIP-14 values.