Impact of Oral Rehabilitation on Patients with Head and Neck Cancer: Study of 100 Patients with Liverpool Oral Rehabilitation Questionnaire and the Oral Health Impact Profile

Prosthodontic rehabilitation enables head and neck cancer patient to optimally restore function, thereby improving and enhancing the oral health related quality of life of cancer patients. The liverpool oral rehabilitation questionnaire (LORQ-v3) and oral health impact profile (OHIP) are specific tools that measure OHRQOL. Hundred patients with head and neck cancer were included in the study. Patients were asked to rate their experience of dental problems before fabrication of prosthesis and after 1 year using LORQv3 and OHIP-14. The responses were compared on Likert scale. There were extreme problems reported by head and neck cancer patients before dental rehabilitation. After 1 year of prosthetic rehabilitation, there was improvement noticed in all the domain of LORQ-v3 and OHIP-14. Complete compliance to the use of prosthetic appliances for 1 year study period was noted. For all the items of LORQ-v3 there was 10 to 38% improvement in function. OHIP-14 showed an 11 to 26% improvements in all the domains. Prosthetic rehabilitation contributed to an improvement of patients with head and neck cancer, in view of the decreased scores on the Likert scale after prosthetic treatment. The study of hundred patients with head and neck cancer showed that the oral health-related quality of life improved after prosthodontic rehabilitation.