Comparing the oral health-related quality of life of people with diabetes and people without diabetes at a Tertiary Hospital in Nigeria

Abstract: Objectives: The bidirectional relationship between diabetes mellitus and periodontal disease may negatively influence the oral health quality of life of diabetics. The study aims to compare the oral health quality of life of diabetics and non-diabetics.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study involving 115 people with diabetes seen at the Endocrine Clinic and 115 non-diabetics at Dental Centre UPTH. A self-administered questionnaire was employed for this study. The people with diabetes were selected by systematic random sampling method, and the non-diabetics were matched for age and sex from the Oral Diagnosis unit. Data analysis was done with IBM SPSS Statistics version 25. Chi-square and t-tests were done to test for differences and level of significance at 0.05.Results: There were 44 (38.3%) males, 71 (61.7%) females in each group and the mean ages were 56.04 ± 11.67 years for non-diabetics and 55.97 ± 11.48 years for diabetics. Of the 14 subdomains of OHIP-14, only the ‘had to interrupt meals’ was significantly different between diabetics 17 (14.8%) with impact and non-diabetics 29 (25.2%) without impact (p=0.048). the summated OHIP-14 impact was 27 (23.5%) for diabetics and 32 (27.8%) for non-diabetics (p=0.450). whereas the non-diabetics were found to have slightly higher impacts in nine (64.3%) out of the 14 subdomains of OHIP-14, people with diabetes had 5 (35.7%).Conclusions: The oral health impact of non-diabetics was not significantly different from that of the diabetics. It is imperative to refer people with diabetes for routine oral evaluation and intervention.