Modification of the oral health impact profile 49 in spanish an expert’s opinion proposal

Abstract

Objetives: The Oral Health Impact Profile 49 in Spanish (OHIP-49 sp) is an instrument used to evaluate the oral health related quality of life. This questionnaire consists of 49 quality related questions.

After studying the OHIP-49 Sp instrument, it came to attention that it lacked theoretical validation; because of this, the main objective was to assess the possibility of a modification for OHIP-49 Sp by means of an expert committee and to be applied in elderly patients.

Methods: a cross sectional descriptive study was done in which the expert committee was composed of 8 professionals with studies in geriatrics, odontogeriatrics, geronthology and/or experience with elderly patients.

Results: Every question of the OHIP-49 Sp questionnaire was evaluated, obtaining that 13 of the 49 questions were deemed doubtful by the experts or they considered to disagree or strongly disagree with the way in which they were redacted. In the end, 5 questions were considered to be the worst formulated and, thus, should be subject to modifications. In addition, each of the questions were classified according to the score they received, several of the questions had more than one criticism made towards them, the most frequent being “lack of clarity” and “ambiguity”.

Conclusion: After analysis of the OHIP-49 Sp questionnaire, it was noted that indeed there is opportunity for changes to be made in respect of the original questionnaire.