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Revista Portuguesa de Estomatologia,
Medicina Dentária e Cirurgia Maxilofacial

rev port estomatol med dent cir maxilofac. 2019;60(3):118-124

Original research

Oral manifestations in patients with different
oral health behaviors submitted to chemotherapy:

a preliminary study

Jéssica Gilberto Santilal*, Sandra Ribeiro Graça

Faculdade de Medicina Dentária, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Objective: This observational study aims to evaluate oral manifestations and symptoms
Received 17 April 2019 during chemotherapy in 49 adult patients with onco-hematologic pathology, and to inves-
Accepted 12 October 2019 tigate whether oral health habits influence the experience of signs and symptoms in the
Available online 29 October 2019 oral cavity and the quality of life of these patients.
Methods: The study was carried out in the outpatient clinic of the Hematology Department
Keywords: and the Myeloma Clinic of the Instituto Português de Oncologia Francisco Gentil de Lisboa.
Chemotherapy Data were collected by a questionnaire and oral examination. Mann-Whitney and
Oral health Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to verify possible associations between the number of oral
Oral hygiene habits manifestations and the cycles and duration of chemotherapy, frequency of dental appoint-
Oral manifestations ments and quality of life.
Quality of life Results: The results showed that 89.8% of the patients reported oral symptoms, of which the
most frequent were xerostomia (71.7%) and dysgeusia (47.8%). About a quarter of the patients
reported a worse quality of life during chemotherapy (p=0.001), which was associated with
a higher number of oral manifestations (p=0.002). No associations were found between the
symptoms and the number of manifestations and the use of dental services before or dur-
ing chemotherapy, oral hygiene habits or the number of chemotherapy cycles. However, the
duration of chemotherapy influenced the number of oral manifestations (p=0.014).
Conclusions: This study demonstrated that chemotherapy influences oral health negatively
and compromises the quality of life. The dental-medical follow-up of these patients is fun-
damental to minimize the consequences of this therapy. (Rev Port Estomatol Med Dent Cir
Maxilofac. 2019;60(3):118-124)
© 2019 Sociedade Portuguesa de Estomatologia e Medicina Dentária.
Published by SPEMD. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jessica_gilberto@hotmail.com (Jéssica Gilberto Santilal).
http://doi.org/10.24873/j.rpemd.2019.10.460
1646-2890/© 2019 Sociedade Portuguesa de Estomatologia e Medicina Dentária. Published by SPEMD.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).