Amina AlTarouti, Randa Abidia, Hafsa Raheel, Muhannad Hawari, Saud AlMojaly, Abdulla AlQarawi, Rawa Kamal
Pertaining to the World Health Organization WHO’s definition of health as ‘a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not just the absence of disease’ Oral health has been identified as an integral part of General Health; and Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an important part of the Global Oral Health Program (1).Several epidemiological studies have proven the relationship between sleep disorders and oral health (2, 3). These oral impacts affect the individual’s Quality of Life. These studies have investigated the relationship from a clinical perspective. This study, however, intends to approach this relationship from a patient’s perspective.
A cross sectional study of 203 men and women aged 25 to 60 who were diagnosed with one of the following sleep disorders Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) or sleep bruxism. The data was collected from the Sleep Medicine Clinic for patients with OSA, the internal medicine clinic for GERD, and the dental department clinics at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research center (KFSH&RC).
We used a data collection sheet to collect the following sociodemographic and clinical data; and Oral health-related quality of life was measured using the Arabic version of the short form of Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) (4).
Data revealed that Physical pain and psychological disability domains of the OHIP-14 questionnaire had the highest impact on the quality of life of patients with sleep disorders. As for the three groups examined in this study, total OHRQoL and mean scores showedthat no significant differences were found between OSA, GERD and sleep bruxism.