An extended life span has made people in general pay more attention to the importance of oral health as what affects the quality of life, and that also has contributed to having their health-related financial burden and pain compounded. The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of the oral healthrelated lives of adults in an attempt to help formulate more efficient health-care policies and programs, to improve the general and oral health care of adults and ultimately to further their quality of life. The subjects in this study were adults who were under 65 across the nation in Western age. They were selected by using a table of random numbers from a KTF directory, and a self-administered survey was conducted by mail from March through June, 2006. Their answer sheets were gathered by mail, too. Dental hospitals and clinics that the selected people used were asked to provide information on their oral health status. Those who didn’t use any dental hospitals or clinics were helped by this researcher to be tested by dentists or by dental hygienists under the supervision of dentists after dental institutions that were accessible to them were selected. 1,500 questionnaires were handed out, and the answer sheets from 586 people were gathered(response rate 39%). The collected data were analyzed with SPSS/PC WIN 12.0 program. The major findings of the study were as follows: 1. As for the reliability of OHIP-49, an inventory of evaluating the quality of health-related life, Cronbach’s alpha of it ranged from 0.8 to 0.9. 2. Concerning relations between their oral health state and the quality of life related to oral health, a higher quality of life was led by those whose occlusal conditions were normal, whose dental calculus was less and who had a less number of missing teeth and prosthetic tooth. And the gap between them and the others was statistically significant. Missing teeth made a difference to the quality of life related to oral health by approximately 12 to 15 scores when the rate of missing teeth accounted for 30 percent or less. The number of prosthetic teeth made little difference to the quality of life, but the denture wearers were different from the others in the quality of life related to oral health by about 17 to 29 scores. 3. Regarding connections between the general characteristics of the subjects and their quality of life related to oral health, those who were male, who were younger, who were better educated and who had a larger monthly mean income, led a higher-quality of life in association with oral health. The above-mentioned findings lent credibility to the reliability of the Korean versions of and OHIP-49.
One’s health cannot be complete without a good oral health, and the quality of life definitely hinge on oral health status. So the importance of existing teeth shouldn’t be overlooked. Intensive research efforts should be directed into providing successful health education for different group of learners to improve their quality of life, and a larger number of subjects from different backgrounds should be examined to prepare more valid instruments. Improved health education is expected to promote the health of people, to let them stay away from diseases and to help them live a better quality of life, and efficient health-care policies should be prepared to urge them to keep taking care of themselves.
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