Oral Health-Related Quality of Life Correlates amongst Elderly Indian Population

Objectives: The increasing Indian aged population face various insult like physical, psychological, economical and social which indirectly also affects the quality of life of an individual. The present study contemplated to assess oral health status, treatment needs and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) amongst the elderly population residing in old age homes in two districts of Karnataka, India.

Methods: Seven old age homes were selected randomly out of a total list of 14 retrieved from telephone directory. The elderly population totaled to 454 out of which 338 falling within the inclusion criteria participated. Permission from the authorities at each of the old age homes and ethical approval was obtained from Kasturba Hospital Ethics Committee, Manipal. The Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI) after language conversion and reliability testing was recorded by face-to-face interview. The study population was divided into three groups according to GOHAI scores. Clinical examination was conducted at the field site according to WHO (1997) criteria for oral health assessment. Both recorder and examiner were trained and calibrated. All data was analyzed using SPSS Version 15.0 by Chi-square test for categorical data and one-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis test for continuous data.

Results: The mean Add-GOHAI score was 46.3 (SD = 3.6) and score range of 36 to 58. A statistically significant difference was observed between the groups upon comparison of habit of smoking, marital status and the material used for oral hygiene practice. The mean Community Periodontal Index scores among three groups were 1.45±0.78, 1.29±0.46 and 1.44±0.73. All study subjects within the three groups according to oral health-related quality of life showed >4 DMFT, with no association with OHRQoL.

Conclusion: Overall, it could be concluded that the Oral Health Status of the study population was poor and Treatment Needs were high.