Multimedia patient education to assist oral impression taking during dental treatment: A pilot study.

<bold>Introduction: </bold>Proper cooperation between patient and dentist is of great help to make a good oral impression. However, patients are frequently confused when information is given through traditional verbal description. The present study compared the effectiveness of the multimedia information delivery ways with the traditional verbal manner on patients' understanding level in oral impression taking.<bold>Methods: </bold>The recruited 191 participating patients were randomly assigned to the control group (the verbal group) and two intervention groups (the video group and the picture group) according to the information delivery manner. After intervention, the patients' understanding degree was measured by questionnaire and performance evaluation of behavior feedback on the provided information quantitatively. Also, patients' self-assessment of satisfaction was interviewed by telephone. All data was analyzed by SPSS 14.0 software, and p≤0.05 was set as significant difference in advance.<bold>Results: </bold>One-Way ANOVA and Chi-square showed there were no statistically significant differences in the mean age, gender composition, and educational level among the three groups (P>0.05). In both questionnaire assessment and performance evaluation, One-Way ANOVA followed by LSD indicate that the video group gained a higher score than the verbal group or the picture group (P<0.05). The questionnaire score in the picture group is significantly higher than in the control group (P<0.05), but no significant difference was shown between these two groups in patients' performance evaluation (P>0.05). Higher percentage of satisfaction was reported by patients in the two multimedia groups than that in the control group.<bold>Discussion: </bold>Oral impression taking is a consecutive process that requires action cooperation between dentists and patients simultaneously. This particularity makes it more suitable for multimedia delivery. The delivery of tailored information using multimedia in this study was favored by most patients and could improve the degree of patient understanding of the oral impression taking procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]