Psychological Effects of Trauma to Anterior Teeth

Abstract

Dental trauma has a very distressing experience on physical, emotional and psychological aspects of the patient. The aim of the study was to determine the psychological effects of anterior dental trauma on patients.
A questionnaire study was carried out to know the psychological aspects of trauma to anterior teeth based on the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) index. It is regarded as the most comprehensive tool for measuring Oral Health Related Quality of Life. This study concentrated only on psychological discomfort and psychological disability. Each item was scored on a five-point scale ranging from “never” (coded 0) to “very often” (coded 4).
The statistical significance of the scores thus obtained and the mean levels of the severity scores between genders and age groups were calculated using the statistical chi-square test. In our study psychological effects to anterior teeth trauma was most observed in the age group of 18-25. Interestingly when the observation was monitored across genders, we observed large psychological effect in females when compared to male gender.