Profiling Dentine Hypersensitivity Sufferers Using the Self-Regulatory Model of Illness

Methods: A total of 280 dentine hypersensitivity sufferers were purposively sampled from one large University in the UK and, of this group, 101 individuals met the inclusion criteria for the study. Participants completed online questionnaires which assessed their health anxiety, illness beliefs (identity, perceived personal/treatment control, consequences, illness coherence, acute/chronic timeline, cyclical timeline and emotional representations), pain-related coping strategies (passive and active) and oral health-related of life (OHRQoL). Participants also submitted an online diary every day for two weeks, which provided information on the number of times they had experienced painful sensations in their teeth. Hierarchical cluster analysis was employed to combine cases and the agglomeration schedule determined the most appropriate number of clusters.

Results:

The results provided support for two cluster structures; cluster group 1 (N=32) were categorised as ‘high-level sufferers’ and reported worse OHRQoL and more pain than ‘low-level sufferers’ included within cluster group 2 (N=69). ‘High-level sufferers’ also reported elevated levels of health anxiety, perceived more negative consequences and emotional representations associated with their condition, understood their condition less, reported more identity-related impacts, had greater chronic/cyclical timeline beliefs, perceived lower levels of personal control over their condition and used more passive coping strategies than ‘low-level sufferers’.

Conclusions:

The study used the SRM framework to identify two subgroups of dentine hypersensitivity sufferers who differed in relation to key health outcomes. The findings provide support for the organisation of maladaptive illness beliefs and coping strategies and offer insight into possible areas for intervention.