Oral health literacy of dental patients in Thammasat Hospital

Inadequacy of literacy skills is an important barrier to receiving proper health care. Oral health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic oral health information and services needed to make appropriate oral health decisions. Objectives: This study aimed to 1) assess the extent of oral health literacy (OHL) among dental patients; 2) determine the associations between OHL and oral health status; OHL and the Oral Impacts on Daily Performances Index (OIDP), 3) explore whether age, gender, education, income and dental visits affected OHL. Methods: Two hundred patients in Thammasat dental clinic who provided written informed consent, 13-76 years old, participated in this study. The modified-Test of Functional Health Literacy in Dentistry was used to measure OHL. For oral health status, ICDAS II and Gingival index were used. OIDP were used to assess oral health-related quality of life. Ranges of reliability between two examiners were 0.78-1.00 for ICDAS II; 0.60-0.90 for GI. SPSS version 16 was used to analyze the data with an á=05. Results: Of the total scores 50, average OHL scores were 21.2+4.9; 20.8+5.4 for 68 male and 21.3+4.7 for 132 female, respectively. Almost 95% of all patients had inadequate OHL (0-29 points) and only about 5% had moderate OHL (30-37 points). None had adequate OHL (38-50 points). Only education (r=0.3, p<0.01) and income (r=0.2, p=0.04) were positively correlated with OHL. No associations between OHL and other variables were found. Conclusion: This study shows that OHL of dental patients in Thammasat Hospital was insufficient, and confirms that education and income positively enhanced OHL of those dental patients.

This study was supported by the Faculty of Dentistry, Thammasat University. 009-->