Oral health-related quality of life and associated factors in Norwegian adults

AbstractObjective. To investigate associations between oral health-related quality of life assessed with the Oral Health Impact Profile(OHIP)-14 and demographic factors, number of teeth present, dental visits, dental health behaviour and self-rated oral healthin a representative sample of 20–80-year-old Norwegians. Material and methods. The study was conducted in a stratifiedrandom sample of 3538 individuals. Questionnaires including questions on demographic factors, number of remaining teeth,dentalvisits, dentalhealthbehaviour, self-rated oralhealth andOHIP-14weremailedtothesample.Bivariate andmultivariateanalyses were performed. Results. The response rate was 69%. The mean OHIP-14 score was 4.1 (standard deviation = 6.2).No problem was reported by 35% of the respondents. The most frequently reported problems were: physical pain (56%),psychological discomfort (39%) and psychological disability (30%). When the effect of all independent variables was analysedin multivariate analysis, self-rated oral health, frequency of dental visits, number of teeth, age and sex were significantly(P < 0.05) associated with the prevalence of having problems and frequent problems. Self-rated oral health had the strongestassociation with having problems [odds ratio (OR) 4.5; 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.4–6.0] and with having frequentproblems (OR 4.0; 95% CI 2.7–5.8). Dental health behaviour, use of floss and toothpicks and oral rinsing were not associatedwith having problems related to oral quality of life in multivariate analyses. Conclusion. In this Norwegian adult sample, self-rated oral health, frequency of dental visits, number of teeth, age and sex were associated with having problems as estimatedusing the OHIP-14.Key Words: Epidemiology, Oral Health Impact Profile-14, self-rated oral health