Quality of Life of Patients Treated with Implant-supported Mandibular Overdentures

Objectives: The present study aims to evaluate the oral health-related quality of life of patients treated with single or two implant-supported mandibular overdentures.
Methods: Forty-two patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria were included in this study and randomly allocated to receive either single implant-supported mandibular overdenture (SIMOD) or two implant-supported mandibular overdenture (TIMOD). There were twenty patients in the SIMOD and twenty-two patients in the TIMOD group. The Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14) questionnaire was used to measure the impact on quality of life at baseline (prior to commencement of treatment) and at one-year follow up. The seven domains in OHIP-14 were functional limitation, physical pain, psychological discomfort, physical disability, psychological disability, social disability and handicap (two questions in each domain), with a 5-point Likert scale- never (=1), hardly ever (=2), occasionally (=3), fairly often (=4) and very often (=5). The results were analyzed with SPSS software (Version 22.0, Chicago, IL, USA) using ANOVA and Wilcoxon rank sum test (P < 0.05).
Results: At baseline for both groups, physical pain and physical disability appeared to be the two domains that patients reported having frequent difficulties, 58% and 43% of patients in the SIMOD and TIMOD group reported having experience frequent physical pain in the mandibular removable complete denture. Both SIMOD and TIMOD group reported significant improvement with the implant-supported mandibular overdenture in these two domains with no statistical significance difference in other domains (P>0.05). SIMOD group patients reported higher OHIP-14 values, but statistically no significant difference (P<0.05).
Conclusions: Within the limitations of the present study, patients treated with implant-supported mandibular overdentures were satisfied with their oral health-related quality of life, single implant-supported mandibular overdenture is a viable treatment option.