Impact of prosthetic rehabilitation on oral health-related quality of life of Saudi Adults: A prospective observational study with pre-post design

This study aimed to assess the impact of prosthetic treatment on the quality of life of partially/completely edentulous patients through the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14) scale. This pre-post observational study was conducted in the College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia, between November 2022 and September 2023. Eligible participants were those aged between 26 and 80, in need of prosthetic treatment, and able to complete the questionnaire voluntarily. The questionnaire presented to the patients had two sections; the first included demographic and dentures-related variables, and the second included the OHIP-14 questionnaire. Differences in overall OHIP-14 scores after treatment about demographic and prosthesis-related factors were assessed using the Mann-Whitney U test/Kruskal Wallis test with a significance level of 0.05. Out of 108 participants, 65 were males, and 43 were females with an average age of 52 years with different prosthetic treatments (13.9 % fixed prostheses, 43.5 % removable partial, and 42.6 % complete dentures). 59.3 % brushed their teeth twice or more daily, and only 36.1 % checked them regularly. Comparison between the OHIP-14 items before and after treatment revealed that subjects exhibited improvement in all the domains. OHIP-14 scores did not differ significantly in terms of age, gender, and education after treatment. OHIP-14 score was considerably higher for patients with medical conditions (P = 0.007) and among complete denture wearers compared to patients with fixed prostheses (P = 0.025). Prosthetic treatment positively impacts oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL), which improved after treatment, particularly in the social domain. There was an association between patients' medical condition, prosthesis type, and OHIP-14 score.