PAPER #59 - Oral Health-Related Quality of Life at Teenage Students With or Without Orthodonic Treatments from North- Eastern Romania.

Problem Statement: World Health Organization defines quality of life as the perceptions of an individual regarding its position in life in the context of culture and system of values, in which one lives, and social, sanogenous, environmental and psycho-social influences. COHIP questionnaire was designed as a generic instrument sensitive to the impact of self-reported oral health quality of life (OHRQoL) for children and adolescents. Purpose of Study: We proposed to evaluate the impact of OHRQoL and investigate students' motivation for choosing orthodontic treatment on a sample of 114 teenage students from an urban public college from North-Eastern Romania (Suceava) with different socio-economic status, divided into a group with orthodontic treatments (N=43) and another group without orthodontic treatments (N=71). Research Methods: We used a cross-sectional survey based on two standardized questionnaires. COHIP questionnaire for measuring OHRQoL consisted of 38 questions, grouped into seven sub-scales: oral health, functional well-being, social-emotional wellbeing, school-environment, self-image, treatment's expectations and overall health. We calculated the scores of COHIP sub-scales and overall score of OHRQoL and we compared them between groups, genders and background environment. The second questionnaire consisting of 7 items was applied to adolescents with orthodontic appliances to find their reasoning for choosing orthodontic treatment. Findings: Using SPSS, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, t-Student and Mann-Whitney tests we found statistically significant differences between the two groups comparing the mean scores of sub-scales for oral health (p=0.001), functional well-being (p=0.004), social-emotional well-being (p=0.000), self-image (p=0.019), overall score of OHRQoL (p=0.000), and also comparing the intensity of social-emotional well-being sub-scales' scores (p=0.031), school-environment (p=0.002) and overall score of OHRQoL (p=0.015). The group of students with orthodontic treatments showed statistically significant differences between genders comparing the average score of self-image sub-scale (p=0.050). They presented aesthetic reasons (67.4%), dissatisfaction of teeth irregularities (53.5%), at parents' request (41.9%) and at dentists' indications (39.5%) for orthodontic treatment. No statistically significant differences were found between genders and background environment (p>0.05), using Pearson's Chi-square test. Conclusions: COHIP questionnaire proved the ability to discriminate the groups of teenage students and psychological impact of OHRQoL, which was better at those who had aesthetic reasons for choosing orthodontic treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]