Impact of traumatic dental injury treatment on the Oral Health-Related Quality of Life of children, adolescents, and their family: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Background/Aim Measures of oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) are useful in clinical trials to evaluate treatment outcomes. To detect the treatment impact of traumatic dental injuries (TDI) on OHRQoL is extremely relevant. The aim of this study was to assess whether there is scientific evidence of the impact of TDI treatment on OHRQoL of children, adolescents, and their families. Material and Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted selecting articles from PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and Virtual Health Library until May 22nd, 2020. The gray literature, clinical trial registers, and a manual search were performed. Two independent reviewers selected the studies, extracted the data, and assessed the ROBINS-I risk of bias. A meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.4 program. The certainty of the evidence was evaluated using the GRADE system. Results In the electronic search, 413 abstracts and one registered study were found. After removing the duplicates and eligibility application, six studies were included. Individually, the studies presented low to moderate risk of bias and they found that TDI treatment reduces the negative impact on OHRQoL. In the meta-analysis, TDI treatment improved OHRQoL for 8- to 10-year-old children (p = .03; CI 5.19 [0.62, 9.75]) (detected by CPQ 8-10 questionnaire). In the perception of parents, the children, and adolescents who had suffered TDI also had their OHRQoL improved (p = .04; CI 14.77 [0.95, 28.60]) (detected by PPQ and P-CPQ questionnaire) but both evaluations had very low certainty of evidence. Conclusion Treatment of traumatic dental injuries reduces the impact on the OHRQoL of children and adolescents. However, more studies are necessary to detect the TDI treatment influence on OHRQoL of preschoolers and in the family as well to estimate the effects due to outcomes that had a very low certainty of evidence (#CRD42018091210).