Periodontitis impacts quality of life in postmenopausal women.

AIM: Interrelationships between traditional dental variables are becoming more evident in far-reaching aspects of life such as psychosocial interaction, self-esteem, overall health and even occupational performance. This study compares quality of life in postmenopausal women with chronic periodontitis with that of healthy postmenopausal women. METHOD: A total of 128 randomly recruited postmenopausal women received a comprehensive periodontal evaluation and completed the Utian Quality of Life Survey. The participants were divided into healthy and periodontitis groups based on comprehensive periodontal examination. Mean scores were calculated for each quality-of-life item, domain and the overall summary score. Periodontitis patients' quality-of-life outcomes were compared to those of healthy patients using the t-test with threshold of significance at p < 0.05. RESULTS: Quality-of-life scores in all fields measured were significantly poorer in the periodontitis patients compared to the healthy patients, occupational (25.74 +/- 8.25 vs. 21.40 +/- 9.19), health (26.46 +/- 5.93 vs. 19.64 +/- 10.24), emotional (21.04 +/- 10.20 vs. 16.40 +/- 10.84), sexual (9.23 +/- 4.92 vs. 5.96 +/- 5.20), and total score (82.48 +/- 23.74 vs. 63.69 +/- 26.61). CONCLUSION: This study has identified that postmenopausal women with chronic periodontitis report significantly poorer quality of life than healthy patients. Clinicians caring for postmenopausal women should be aware that periodontitis also impacts quality of life when making referral decisions for oral health care.