Impact of Awareness Obtained from Studying Dentistry on Oral Health-Related Quality of Life at Shahid Beheshti University

Today, the impact of oral health on indicators of quality of life is of great importance. As few studies have evaluated dental students who are future dentists of a society, this study was performed to assess the impact of awareness on oral health-related quality of life on first, third- and sixth-year Shahid Beheshti dental students in 2017-2018.

This descriptive cross-sectional and analytical study was conducted on 220 Shahid Beheshti dental students. The required data was collected by using a sociodemographic questionnaire (including gender, academic year indicating level of awareness, and GPA) and Persian version of oral health-related quality of life questionnaire, OHIP-14. The questionnaires’ scores were compared by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) or Welch’s t-test.

The average total score of OHIP-14 questionnaire in dental students was 8.26 (SD=7.41). A significant relationship between the academic year and oral health-related quality of life was not noticed except in “Psychological Discomfort” domain where oral health-related quality of life deteriorated with an increase in the academic year (p=0.0001).

Oral health-related quality of life in dental students did not change significantly with an increase in the academic year except in “Psychological Discomfort” domain.