DENTAL PATIENT-REPORTED OUTCOMES -- THE PROMISE OF DENTAL IMPLANTS

In general dental practice, the use of implants is focused mostly on prosthodontic issues. That is, the replacement of missing teeth or the support of dental prostheses. However, there are other dental fields using implants such as orthodontics or maxillofacial prosthodontics. A classic way to measure success in implant dentistry is to look how long implants and the corresponding superstructure survive and are in function. Nevertheless, this alone is a very crude parameter. Therefore, biological and technical complications are taken in account additionally. Nonetheless, these objective measures do not well replicate the perception of the patient. That why, subjective measures, reflecting the perception of the patient are recommended to complement objective parameters. If these dental patient-reported outcome measures (dPROMs) are wisely chosen, they offer a wide variety of options. Besides comparing therapeutic effects by using the instruments' summary score only, dPROMs such as the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) provide the opportunity to additionally assess patients` perceptions in the 4 dimensions of oral health-related quality of life. These are functional limitations, pain, esthetic issues as well as psychosocial impairment. Even the 5-item short form of the OHIP captures these dimensions and provides an efficient way to assess patients' perception with low administrative burden. This in turn offers new insights into the patient perspective and therefore helps improving shared decision making.