Qualidade de vida relacionada à saúde bucal de deficientes visuais institucionalizados

Abstract

Oral health can influence the general health status and quality of life of individuals. The objective was to evaluate the quality of life related to oral health (HRQoL) of institutionalized Brazilian visually impaired (DV). It was a census and cross-sectional study, carried out with 41 individuals with visual impairment, users of an Institute for the blind in a medium-sized municipality. Participants responded to a socioeconomic, demographic and clinical form. Clinical examinations were carried out to assess the oral health condition, in addition to assessing its impact on quality of life through the Oral Health Impact Profile questionnaire (OHIP-14). Descriptive statistics and segmentation analysis were performed for OHIP-14. Still, Pearson's and Mann-Whitney's chi-square tests between the study variables, where the level of significance was set at 5% (p <0.05). Most patients were male (63.4%), had a mean age of 34.51 years (SD = 3.44), acquired visual impairment (51.2%) and were blind (53.7 %). The segmentation analysis revealed the formation of two patient clusters: 1st cluster (n = 18; 43.9%) - individuals with the greatest impact; 2nd cluster (n = 23; 56.1%) - individuals with less impact. No statistically significant differences were identified (p> 0.05) in the analysis of the association between the impact of oral conditions on quality of life, demographic, socioeconomic and clinical characteristics. The institutionalized VD in this study has considerable oral health and dental care needs, in addition to considerable impacts on oral health-related quality of life.