Parent's report on oral health-related quality of life of children with haemophilia

Introduction: Among children with haemophilia and their caregivers; problems arising from the teeth and the surrounding tissues have an important role in the treatment of this disease and it affects the quality of life of children and their parents.

Aim: Aim of this study is to evaluate the oral health-related quality of life of children with haemophilia from the perspective of their parents.

Methods: Paediatric oral health-related quality of life (POQL) instrument was used in this cross-sectional study for quality of life measurement. The research data collected by the questionnaire form were coded for scale items and personal information questions and transferred to SPSS, a multivariate statistical analysis program for social sciences. SPSS 23.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY) package program was used for statistical analysis of the data.

Results: Primary dentition dmft scores of patients with haemophilia are higher than the control group; mean value of haemophilic group is 3.5 vs control group are 2.6, respectively (P = 0.034). In spite of higher dmft scores, the haemophilia and control groups have shown no significant difference in oral health-related quality of life scores; median scores were 63.9 in haemophilic group and 85.3 in control group (P = 0.336), respectively.

Conclusion: In spite of lower oral health measures, children with haemophilia and their parents reported no difference in oral health-related quality of life from their healthy counterparts.