Oral health-related quality of life during supportive periodontal therapy: results from a randomized clinical trial.

Aim Assessment of Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) during a randomized controlled trial of supportive periodontal therapy (SPT) consisting of oral prophylaxis with oral hygiene instructions only (test) or in conjunction with subgingival instrumentation (control). Methods OHIP-14 was assessed at baseline, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Data from 62 participants (50.97 ± 9.26 years, 24 smokers) were analyzed by GEE and Logistic regression. OHIP-14 means, effect size, floor and ceiling effect and minimal important difference were calculated. Sum of OHIP-14 (severity), numbers of responses (extent) 'fairly often' (FO) or 'very often' (VO) and percentage of people (prevalence) reporting FO or VO were computed. Results At baseline, low scores of OHIP-14 were observed for test (7.67 ± 9.27) and control (6.51 ± 7.47) with a decreasing trend during SPT, without differences between or intra-groups over time. At 6 months a difference was observed in the OHIP-14 prevalence (p=0.03), without differences in severity and extent. Smoking status and plaque >15% (moderate oral hygiene) at 24 months were associated with higher OHIP-14 prevalence scores at that point of time (p=0.038 and p=0.034 respectively). Conclusion Patients submitted to two different modalities of SPT maintained low OHIP-14 scores over 2 years of care.