Study on Effects of Tobacco (Smoked and Chewed) and Areca Nut on Oral Health and Quality of Life in Indian Population Not Having Overt Oral Malignancy

Background: Tobacco dependence is a major public health problem that results in significant morbidity and mortality. Approximately, 5 million people are killed annually by tobacco use. In this study we wanted to assess the oral health status and quality of life among adult tobacco users (smoked and chewed) and areca nut users. Methods: This was a longitudinal case control study. Each one of the study subjects (tobacco users of more than one year duration, n = 296) & healthy subjects (non-users, n = 150) were interviewed by a questionnaire based on 5-point Likert scale. Questionnaire consisted of 11 questions of different quality of life aspects in Hindi (vernacular), each question having 5 options. Minimum score was 11 depicting good quality of life and highest score was 55 representing significantly poor quality of life. Result: The greater duration of usage of gutka, gutka and bidi, gutka, bidi and cigarette, bidi and cigarette, areca nut and pan masala have attained higher scores and there was a fall in percentage of individuals with lower scores when the duration of usage was increased. Minor oral cavity problems were present in the subjects who used tobacco and areca nut. Study subjects with lower scores were less when compared to healthy subjects i.e., 14.48 % study subjects were between 11 - 20 compared to 65 % of healthy subjects. This was also statistically significant with p value of < .001. Conclusion: The study concludes that duration of tobacco usage correlated with individual’s quality of life and as evident from this work, study subjects with duration of usage of tobacco/areca nut for > 15 years attained higher scores and the percentage of study subjects with lower scores increased for duration of < 5 years.http://impactfactor.org/PDF/IJCPR/14/IJCPR,Vol14,Issue4,Article18.pd