Mothers' sense of coherence and oral health-related quality of life in cleft lip and palate children visiting a private dental college: A Survey

Background: In addition to an adjusting physical appearance, children with cleft lip and palate also deal with psychological and psychosocial limitation. Mothers' sense of coherence (SOC) could be a psychosocial determinant of oral health quality of life (OH-QoL) of cleft lip and palate patients. Hence, the present study was done to assess the relationship of mothers' SOC on OH-QoL in cleft lip and palate patients.

Materials and methods: The present cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted on mothers of cleft lip and palate children. The first part consisted of demographic details. The second part of scale was the early childhood and oral health impact scale (ECOHIS) which had a total 13 questions with responses on a 4-point Likert scale. The third part was to assess mothers' SOC using a short version of SOC-13 consists of 13 items on a 7-point Likert scale. Chi-square test was applied to assess the association between mothers' SOC, sociodemographic characteristic, and children's OHRQoL. In the analysis, P < 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: Out of 69% of low SOC population, 21.73% were rural, 20.39% were from peri-urban, and 57.97% population was from urban areas. Out of 150 participants, 2.40% in high ECOHIS were illiterate/primary school, "31.32% were high school/intermediate/diploma had high ECOHIS while 66.26% were high school/intermediate/diploma" had low ECOHIS, and 25.37% were graduate/postgraduate. Mothers' education and locality were statistically significant P < 0.001.

Conclusion: Action to enhance mothers' SOC might form part of oral health promotion and help to improve the oral health quality of life of cleft lip and palate patients.