Quality of life in correlation with presurgical psychological assessment of surgically treated patients with class III skeletal deformities

Abstract

Introduction/Objective Quality of life before and after mono and bimaxillary surgery may vary from patient to patient depending on psychological assessment score. The aim of this study was to compare the quality of life before and six months after orthognathic surgery in correlation with a presurgical psychological assessment of patients with class III skeletal deformity. Assuming that patients with low psychological assessment results might have a lower quality of life after surgery despite successful treatment results. Methods For this prospective study 30 patients (19 female,11 male) were included. Psychological assessment was obtained before, and quality of life before and after surgery in skeletal deformity class III patients. Statistical analysis was done with a statistical package for social science - SPSS. Results Overall quality of life after surgery significantly improved in all patients. Surgical correction of class III deformities provided a significant improvement independent of the type of surgery and the severity of the deformity, as well as gender and age. There were significant differences in post-surgical quality of life scores between patients with good and poor psychological assessment scores, related to social disability (p < 0.05). Conclusion Patients with lower preoperative psychological scores experienced a lesser improvement in quality of life, particularly in the domain of social disability. This suggests that additional psychological treatment of these patients could further improve the beneficial effects of orthognathic surgery on postoperative quality of life.