Dental aspects of quality of life in orthodontic patients

Relevance. Previous studies have shown an improvement in orthodontic patients’ health-related quality of life. It is interesting to study the effect of various orthodontic appliances on the patients’ quality of life. Purpose – to study the changes in dental parameters of the quality of life in patients with malocclusion before orthodontic treatment, during treatment with metal and ceramic vestibular braces and after treatment, using removable retainers.Materials and methods. Using a validated Russian version of Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-49RU), we surveyed the quality of life in four patient groups: 1 - with malocclusion (n = 35), 2 – with removable retainers (n = 32), 3 – with metal brackets (n = 30), 4 – with ceramic brackets (n = 33). Statistical processing was carried out in Statistics 10. The study used descriptive statistics methods, e.g., nonparametric test methods determined the significance of sign differences: using the Kruskal-Wallis H, z tests and the χ2 test with Yates' correction.Results. OHIP-49 score analysis revealed statistically significant differences among the studied groups of pa- tients (1 - functional limitation (H = 9.15; p <0.05), 2 - physical pain (H = 13.98; p < 0.01), 3 - psychological discomfort (H = 23.04; p <0.001), 4 - physical disability (H = 24.73; p <0.001), 5 - psychological disability (H = 11.03; p < 0.05), 6 - social disability (H = 16.21; p <0.01), 7 - handicap (H = 7.91; p <0.05)).Conclusions. The patients, who had completed the orthodontic treatment and used removable retainers at night, demonstrated the best score in most sections of the questionnaire and the patients with malocclusion, who had presented to an orthodontist - the worst. Patients with the brackets had a higher score on the "Physical pain" section of the questionnaire (6.5 (3.0-8.0) with metal braces and 4.0 (2.0-7.0) with ceramic bracket system). The quality of life in patients with metal and ceramic brackets did not have statistically significant differences.