Conference summary: assessing oral health outcomes--measuring health status and quality of life

This paper summarises proceedings of a conference that aimed to evaluate existing measures of oral health related quality of life and to recommend new directions for their use in oral health outcomes research.

A two day conference was held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, in June 1996. Background papers, poster-discussion sessions, small group discussions and reactor papers were used to analyse 11 oral health related quality of life instruments and to evaluate their potential for use in health outcomes research.

Speakers emphasised the need to include quality of life in multidimensional assessments of oral health outcomes. Existing instruments capture numerous quality of life dimensions using a variety of question- and response-formats. The instruments have been used primarily in cross-sectional, observational studies rather than longitudinal, intervention studies that evaluate health outcomes. There is little experience from their use in long-term follow-up studies and with some special population sub-groups. Recommendations for further research are presented in papers that follow this summary paper.

There has been substantial development and use of quality of life measures in oral health surveys, and there is an immediate need for further research that modifies and uses those instruments in oral health outcomes research.