The responsiveness of the Liverpool Oral Rehabilitation Questionnaire (LORQ): a pilot study

This study aimed to evaluate the responsiveness of denture patients to the Liverpool Oral Rehabilitation Questionnaire (LORQ). Changes in scores for 20 core items completed from 2000 to 2005 by 16 patients both before and after oral rehabilitation were assessed. The median age of respondents was 68 years and the median time between questionnaires was 2.6 years. Results indicated that masticatory efficiency impacted both food choice (P = .03) and social life (P = .06). After rehabilitation there was less worry about maxillary prostheses falling out (P = .07), less embarrassment while conversing (P = .02), and less worry about losing self-confidence from embarrassment caused by dentures (P = .06). Also, drooling problems deteriorated (P = .03). This exploratory study reports encouraging findings, but a larger prospective multicenter study is required to determine the responsiveness of the current version of the LORQ (version 3).