Oral Health-Related Quality of Life and Dental Caries Status Among Elderly People in Bantul Yogyakarta Indonesia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

One of the indicators of poor oral health in older people is dental caries. Dental caries affects quality of life consisting physical, functional, social, and emotional welfare throughout each individual’s life. This study aims to determine the correlation between dental caries status and quality of life among older people in Bantul Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It is an observational study using a cross-sectional design. Subjects of this study consisted of 69 older people in Bantul Yogyakarta Indonesia. The power of the test was 81.6%. The dental caries status was measured using the DMFT index (WHO), and oral health-related quality of life was measured using GOHAI (WHO). The data analysis used was Spearman’s correlation, at a 5% significance level (α = 0.05). The results showed that the DMF-T index mean value was very high (12.8) and GOHAI was low (43.7%). There was a significant correlation between oral health-related quality of life and dental caries status among older people (p=0.049, r=0.238). The higher the dental caries status was, the worse the oral health-related quality of life among older people in Yogyakarta, Indonesia would be.