Patient Reported Outcome Assessment of Periodontal Therapy: A Systematic Review.

INTRODUCTION: Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) are now regarded as a fundamental measure of therapeutic success. Patient's opinion regarding the impact of disease and its treatment is assessed using scales such as Oral Health Related Quality Of Life (OHRQoL) tools. Patient centred outcome assessment is now being considered as a primary outcome measure in clinical trials.

AIM: To evaluate whether treatment of periodontal disease could influence OHRQoL based on available literature.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: An electronic search was done in Google, Google Scholar and Pubmed for articles in English language using the terms Quality of Life or ORHQoL or PROs or patient centered outcome and periodontal therapy. The search commenced on 1(st) September 2016 and ended on 15(th) December 2016. Studies that employed one or more than one multi-item OHRQoL instrument to assess PROs related to either non-surgical or surgical periodontal therapy were reviewed.

RESULTS: Initially 423 relevant articles were obtained, from which based on screening titles and abstracts 396 were excluded. Full text of remaining 27 articles were retrieved. Nineteen clinical studies with 1345 participants and 2 systematic reviews were included after the full text review.

CONCLUSION: Both surgical and Non-surgical Periodontal Therapy (NSPT) significantly influenced the OHRQoL scores. However the change in scores after surgical therapy when compared to nonsurgical therapy was not statistically significant. There is a need for a specific PROs scale that could potentially tap the entire dimension of the change in patients' perception brought about by periodontal therapy.