Beyond Health Services: The Persistent Impact of Early Substance Abuse on Oral Health-related Quality of Life

To investigate the impact of self-reported oral health morbidity and the use of health services on the quality of life of adults, users of a drug addiction treatment service, verifying the moderating effect of chemical dependence.

The research instrument covered socioeconomic characteristics, severity of chemical dependency, morbidity in oral health, use of health services, and oral health-related quality of life. The analysis was performed through the decision tree using the chi-squared automatic interaction detector algorithm and regression analysis with moderation.

The results suggested an association between the high impact on quality of life and the self-perceived need for extraction at the time of self-assessment. In addition, an association was found between the intensity of orofacial pain felt in the last 6 months and quality of life. The moderated regression model, including health service use, age at first substance abuse, and their interaction term, explained 66.15% of the variance in quality of life impact (R ² = 0.6615, P = 0.0101). The significant interaction term shows that the association between health service use and quality of life impact varies according to the age at first substance abuse, highlighting a meaningful moderating effect.

Self-reported oral morbidity is associated with a greater impact on quality of life. For individuals with substance dependence, early initiation of substance use alone is sufficient to negatively affect oral health-related quality of life, regardless of health service utilization.