A pilot study of the use of oral health-related quality of life measures as an outcome for analysing the impact of caries disease among Swedish 19-year-olds.

Objectives: To be useful as a supplement for health economic evaluations in caries preventive care, the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQOL) measures must be able to discriminate for caries disease. The aim of this study was therefore to explore whether any differences existed in perceived OHRQOL among adolescents with either high or no caries experience.

Methods: Eighty-two individuals (all 19-year-olds) agreed to participate in a pilot exploratory case-control study. Thirty individuals with high caries experience formed the test group. The control group consisted of 52 individuals with no caries experience, selected randomly from a caries-free population. OHRQOL scores were collected for analysis through personal interviews using two OHRQOL measures, the Child Perceptions Questionnaire (CPQ(11-14)) and Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14).

Results: The OHRQOL measures used were not able to discriminate between young adults with high and no caries risk experience with respect to perceived OHRQOL. Despite a consistently higher impact score for the test group throughout the overall and subscale scores, the differences were not statistically significant except for one of the subscale scores, oral symptoms.

Conclusions: This study indicates that the prevalence and incidence of caries must be seen as too low in Sweden to have major influence on young adults' perceived OHRQOL and well-being. Therefore, the usefulness of OHRQOL measures in supplementing outcome measurement in health economic evaluations, particularly those that focus on caries preventive strategies, must be questioned.