Methods: In a cohort of 48 elderly persons (mean age 77.4 y, standard deviation 8.5 y), self-related oral health quality was surveyed by means of the German Version of the oral health impact profile (OHIP-G 53). Somatization and depression scores were obtained as respective subscales of the SCL-90-R. Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlation analysis using Spearman's rho were performed.
Results: Correlation between the OHIP sum score was r=.624 (p<.001) for somatization and r=.544 (p<.001) for depression. Regarding individual subscales of the OHIP, correlation ranged from r=.403 (p=.005) to r=.752 (p<.001) for somatization and from r=.298 (p=.040) to r=.697 (p<.001) for depression. Patient's age gave a slight inverse correlation with a value of r=-.333 (p=.022) concerning the OHIP sum score.
Conclusion: As somatization and depression - overall and especially in some subscales - show considerable correlation with OHIP scores, we propose to take these parameters into account as covariates to control for factors not specifically related to oral condition.