Impact Of Oral Health Related Quality Of Life And Possible Role Of Self- Esteem In Orthodontic Patients: A Prospective Clinical Study

The study aimed to evaluate the relationship between oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) concerning Self- esteem reports in children before, during and after orthodontic treatment. This prospective clinical study included 139 patients between 11-16 years old (66 boys and 73 girls) and requested to complete the questionnaires before the start of treatment (T0), one year after the start of treatment(T1), and at two months retention follow up(T2). One –way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for comparisons between the pre, mid and post-treatment means of the study group and to study the significance of changes in parameters over time (for both OHRQoL and SE measures). Pairwise comparison between the individual groups was made'Post – hoc Scheffe test.' Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficient (ρ) was used to evaluate the association between the two ordinal variables. The level of significance was set at a p-value of 0.05 for all tests.The mean value for overall OHRQoL was increased at mid-treatment and decreased at post-treatment, which is significant (p<0.001). The mean value for overall Self- esteem was decreased at mid-treatment and post-treatment, which is also significant (p<0.001). Oral health-related quality of life increased after orthodontic treatment compared to mid-treatment but comparatively less than at pre-treatment, which is statistically significant. The impact on OHRQoL increases during and after orthodontic treatment, and the self-esteem was decreased during and after orthodontic treatment.