Comparison of two measures to determine the oral health-related quality of life in elders with periodontal disease

The Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) and Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI) are accepted as comprehensive and widely used tools for assessing oral health-related quality of life (OHQoL). However, OHQoL assessment of elders with periodontal disease has not yet been investigated. Objective: To assess the discriminative performance of GOHAI and OHIP-14 and to compare the psychometric properties of the scales in older people with periodontal disease. Method Participants were 155 elderly patients with periodontal disease attending a university periodontal department. Periodontal measures included gingival index, plaque index, probing pocket depth, clinical attachment level, and bleeding on probing. GOHAI and OHIP-14 scales were used to assess OHQoL. In addition, participants completed a checklist of symptoms related to periodontal disease. Results: Using the additive method for scoring, 22 participants (14.2%) had a GOHAI score of 0, indicating no impact from periodontal conditions, while 2 participants (1.3%) had an OHIP-14 score of 0. Over two-thirds of participants (70.96%) reported that their self-rated oral health was poor. Conclusions: Both OHIP-14 and GOHAI detected the impacts of oral disease in the elderly with periodontal diseases. Despite differences in content and emphasis, these two scales can be considered broadly equivalent. The main difference between them is the percentage of elderly participants scoring 0; the number of participants with a score of 0 for GOHAI is higher than OHIP-14. In this respect the improvements in OHQoL of the elderly items may be more difficult to detect with GOHAI.