Background The life expectancy of patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has increased, but its oral manifestations can affect the Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) of these patients. This study aimed to evaluate OHRQoL in HIV-infected patients and determine its related factors. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 250 HIV-infected patients were randomly selected from Shiraz Voluntary Counseling and Testing center in 2019. OHRQoL was measured using the revised Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index for HIV patients. The associations between patients’ OHRQoL and demographic characteristics were examined. Results The mean score of the patients' OHRQoL was 24.55 ± 6.27. The lowest and highest scores belonged to the psychosocial and pain categories, respectively. In the univariate analysis, the OHRQoL was significantly associated with patients' age (p = 0.012), duration of the disease (p = 0.009), job (p = 0.006), edentulous status (p = 0.003), and wearing denture (p < 0.001). However, in the multiple linear regression analysis, a significant difference was found only between denture wearing and non-denture wearing patients (p ≤ 0.001). Conclusions The OHRQoL of HIV-infected patients was not optimal since most of the patients were worried about their oral and dental health problems. The OHRQoL was significantly better in denture-wearing patients. This finding highlights the impact of unmet dental needs on OHRQoL in HIV-infected patients. Therefore, dental services coverage for patients with HIV is essential, so that they can have timely access to oral health care. Furthermore, dentures should be considered as an unmet healthcare need among HIV patients in public health policies.

Background: In recent years, life expectancy of patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) increased. They experienced oral manifestations that could affect their Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL). This study was conducted to evaluate OHRQoL in the patients and its related factors. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, using simple random sampling, we selected 250 patients with HIV from Shiraz Voluntary Counseling and Testing center in 2019. To evaluate their OHRQoL, we used Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index revised for patients with HIV. We assessed the association between the patients' OHRQoL and demographic characteristics. Results: The mean score of the patients' OHRQoL was 24.50±6.25. The worst and the best scores were in psychosocial and pain categories, respectively. In univariate analysis, the OHRQoL significantly associated with the patients' age (p=0.005), duration of disease (p=0.008), job (p=0.010), edentulous status (p=0.002), and wearing denture (p<0.001). However, in multiple linear regression analysis, we found only a significant difference between participants wearing and not wearing denture (p=<0.001).Conclusions: The participants declared that they satisfied from averagely 70% of items of OHRQoL. The OHRQoL was significantly better in the patients wearing denture. The finding highlighted the importance of fulfillment of dental needs on improving OHRQoL. Therefore, planning of dental services for patients with HIV is essential so that they have timely access to oral health care. Furthermore, authorities should consider denture as an unmet need in the patients and provide facilities to help the patients to become denture owners.