Developing a validated oral health screening tool for cardiac patients

Aim or Purpose: To develop and validate a simple oral health screening tool for health care providers to utilise with cardiac patients’ assessment Materials and Methods: A 4-item cardiovascular oral health (COS) screening tool was validated through a cross-sectional survey using two gold standard measures, the oral health related quality of life (OHIP 14) tool and clinical oral health assessments. Purposively, 319 people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) were surveyed in Sydney between July-December 2022. The survey included the COS and OHIP 14 tools. Also, a clinical oral health check was conducted (n=89). Mean age 60.45 years, 68.75% (n=220) were males. The COS tool was dichotomised for analysis and based on a two-way table, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value were calculated. Study was approved by the Ethics Review Committee of the Sydney Local Health District. Results: The COS tool to have high sensitivity for correctly detecting those people with CVD at risk of poor oral health. When the COS tool was compared to the OHIP -14 and clinical oral assessment highest sensitivity (OHIP-14=88% and Oral assessment=83.3%) was achieved by combining all the 4 items of the tool. Furthermore, combining the Items 1-4 of the COS tool also resulted in relatively low specificities (OHIP-14=25.5% and Oral assessment=33.3%). Conclusions: This study resulted in the development of a simple cardiovascular oral health screening tool for health care providers that is sensitive in identifying people with CVD at risk of poor oral health and requiring a dental referral and has the potential to be transferable to various cardiac care settings.