Avaliação da responsividade do Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) relacionada à incidência de cárie em pré-escolares – estudo de Coorte

Abstract

Oral health-related quality of life has been considered a multidimensional construct. Its refers to the impact caused by oral health conditions in the individual daily activities, quality of life and well-being. Information about to oral health related quality of life are measured through questionnaires called socio dental indicators. Specifically for preschool children, the most used questionnaire is the Early Childhood Oral Health impact Scale(ECOHIS). The Brazilian version of ECOHIS has already been validated and showed reliability. Besides these characteristics another important aspect of a questionnaire is its responsiveness. It is related with its ability in detect important differences. The aim of this study was to assess the responsiveness of the Brazilian version of Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (B-ECOHIS) to incidence of caries lesions in preschool children. Parent-child pairs participated of this longitudinal study. Children were examined for dental caries based on the International Caries Detection Assessment System (ICDAS) and their parents completed the B-ECOHIS at baseline and follow-up (two years later). Changes in the total ECOHIS scores were calculated and the responsiveness was assessed by examining these scores and the incidence of caries lesions. Unadjusted and adjusted Poisson Regression models were used to verify the association between caries incidence and worsening in children oral health related quality of life. We also assessed the relative risk to worsening quality of life considering ECOHIS domains, based on different caries incidences. After two years of follow-up, 352 parent-child pairs were found and re-examined (73.6 % response rate). Caries incidence from 1 to 4 surfaces was 26.7%, while the incidence of caries lesions for more than 4 surfaces was 14.2%. A total of 124 children have showed worsening in their oral health related quality of life taking into account any change in the ECOHIS values. The mean (SD) of worsening in the ECOHIS scores were 1.2 (1.6). Incidence of caries led to a greater risk to worsening child oral health related quality of life (p<0.001). The responsiveness of B-ECOHIS to the incidence of caries lesions was observed, since the questionnaire scores have changed with the increase of caries lesions.