Leeuwen, M. van (2013) Restricted mouth opening after radiotherapy: the perception of dentate versus (partially) edentulous head and neck cancer patients. thesis, Dentistry.
Full text available on request.Abstract
Introduction: Head and neck cancer can be treated with surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and a combination of these modalities. All of these treatments lead to consequences. Trismus, a restriction of the mouth opening to 35mm or less, is one of the most frequently seen consequences. It can have a severe negative influence on the quality of life of the patient. There are great differences in the perception of trismus: not all patients perceive their mouth opening to be limited at the same actual opening. Little is known about the influence of the dental state on trismus. Possibly, (partially) edentulous patients perceive their mouth opening as being restricted at a smaller mouth opening than dentate patients because they can take out their dental prosthesis, thus reducing the perception of restriction. Purpose and Hypotheses: The purpose of this research is to determine whether or not the dental status is influential on the perception of trismus. It is expected that (partially) edentulous patients perceive less problems with opening their mouth than dentate patients do. Materials and Methods: 381 patients were included in this research. Six months after being treated with radiotherapy, the patients were asked to score their mouth opening, using the tenth question or the EORTC QLQ-H&N35 questionnaire, namely: have you had problems with opening your mouth wide? A high score indicates very much problems. At the same time, the mouth opening of the patients was measured. Multiple descriptive variables were included in this research to determine their effects on the perception of the mouth opening. Logistic regression was used to determine the effect of the dental state on the perception of the mouth opening. Two cut-off points were used to divide the patients into groups to create the necessary dichotomized variable. Results: The outcomes of the logistic regression analysis do not indicate that there is an association between dental state and the perception of a restricted mouth opening at six months after radiotherapy. A relation was found between actual the mouth opening and the perception of the mouth opening. Discussion: When measuring the mouth opening, it was not taken into account if the patient was wearing a dental prosthesis. This could have biased the data. Only the data collected at six months after radiotherapy were analyzed. Possibly other results would have been found if longitudinal research was conducted. Conclusion: No significant effect of the dental state on the perception of the mouth opening at six months after radiotherapy was found.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Thesis) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Kamstra, Ms. Drs. J.I. and Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Dijkstra, Prof. Dr. P.U. and Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and Roodenburg, Prof. Dr. J.L.N. and Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) |
| Faculty: | Medical Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Jun 2020 10:41 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2020 10:41 |
| URI: | https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/227 |
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