Influence of Socioecomomic and Oral Health Status on Acceptability of Dental Therapists' Oral Health Care.

This study explored the acceptability of dental therapists by respondents' socioeconomic factors and oral health status. METHODS: Data were collected from 405 adults during the 2014 Minnesota State Fair through completion of an electronic questionnaire and a modified Basic Screening Survey (BSS). RESULTS: This study found no relevant and statistically significant relationships between a respondent's various socioeconomic factors and their acceptability of care provided by a dental therapist. It also demonstrated no association between participants' perceived or physical oral health status and their acceptability of care provided by a dental therapist. CONCLUSIONS: The acceptability of care provided by a dental therapist is neither related to socioeconomic characteristics nor perceived or physical oral health. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: While advancing the acceptability of dental therapists faces many challenges, the patient's socioeconomic profile and his/her oral health status are not among them.

Development, validity and reliability of the Orofacial Esthetic Scale - Spanish version.

PURPOSE: To develop a Spanish version of the Orofacial Esthetic Scale (OES-Sp) and to determine its psychometric properties in dental patients. METHODS: We performed a validation study for OES development and validation into Spanish. In the development phase, eight individuals participated in the translation process (cross-cultural adaptation) following the PROMIS methodology. In the validation phase, 331 dental patients (age mean±sd: 42.9±12.3years, 59 % female) from the HealthPartners dental clinics in Minnesota, USA responded to a survey of Spanish speaking patients (n=540, response rate: 61 %). We first explored dimensionality by means of exploratory factor analysis and scree plot, and then we computed reliability measures with the Cronbach's alpha statistic. Finally, we assessed convergent validity by computing Pearson/Spearman rank correlations between OES-Sp and Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP)-based orofacial appearance measures. All statistical procedures were performed using Stata v.13 for Windows (StataCorp). RESULTS: Exploratory factor analysis provided evidence that a single factor represents the Spanish OES version. Score reliability was high with Cronbach's alpha statistic of 0.95 (lower limit of the 95 % CI: 0.94). Score validity was sufficient indicated by Pearson and Spearman rank correlations between -0.53 and -0.69 (all 95 % confidence intervals: less than ± 0.10). CONCLUSIONS: OES is a valuable instrument to measure the orofacial appearance construct for Spanish-speaking populations. OES was concluded to be unidimensional with excellent score reliability and sufficient convergent score validity when compared with other Orofacial Appearance measures. Our results suggest that OES could be used in Spanish-speaking patients, an important and growing population around the globe.