Introduction: Previous studies show contradictory outcomes regarding dental, gingival and periodontal status in persons with haemophilia (PWH) compared to healthy controls. PWH may experience disease-specific barriers to access dental care due to their bleeding tendency, which may lead to delays in oral care and severe dental problems.Aim: To determine the current subjective and objective oral health status in adult PWH. Methods: Randomly selected PWH of the Erasmus MC Haemophilia Treatment Center (HTC), Rotterdam, the Netherlands, were invited to participate. Data was collected using the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14NL) and personal interviews. A dentist used the DMFT index, the Dutch Periodontal Screening index (DPSI), plaque and bleeding index to score the dental status.Results: Forty-eight adult PWH were included in this study, 20 mild, 15 moderatesevere and 13 severe haemophilia with a mean age of 44.7. PWH scored low on the OHIP-14 questionnaire (median total score 1.0; IQR .0-3.0), indicating a high selfrating oral health status. The number of bleeding events, bleeding-and plaque index score was not statistically significant between patients with mild, moderate or severe haemophilia. The mean number of decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT-score) was significantly lower in the group of patients with severe haemophilia (median 2.0) compared to mild haemophilia (median 16.0) (p = .04). Twenty-five patients (52.1%) reported to have encountered bleeding problems during or after dental interventions during their lifetime.
Conclusion:Dutch adult PWH A/B have good dental status and oral health status.
K E Y W O R D Sbleeding, dental examination, haemophilia, oral health, oral health impact profile (OHIP) This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.