Centre of Studies for Community Dentistry, Universiti Technoligi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia Centre of Studies for Oral Pathology, Universiti Technoligi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia Community Dentistry, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Oral Health Workforce and Education Group, King's College London Dental Institute, London, UK.
J Public Health Dent. 2014 Winter;74(1):13-20. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-7325.2012.00374.x. Epub 2012 Sep 21.
Demand and use for oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) instruments have increased in recent years in both research and clinical settings. These instruments can be used to measure patient's health status or detect changes in a patient's health status in response to an intervention or changes in disease trajectory. Ensuring universal acceptance of these measures requires easy interpretation of its scores for clinicians, researchers, and patients. The most important way of describing and interpreting this significance of changes in OHRQoL is through the establishment of minimal important difference (MID). The minimally important difference represents the smallest improvement considered worthwhile by a patient. A comprehensive search of published literature identified only 12 published articles on establishment of MID for OHRQoL measures. This scarcity of published studies on MID encourages the need of appropriate interpretation and describing patient satisfaction in reference to that treatment using MID. Anchor- and distribution-based methods are the two general approaches that have been proposed and recommended to interpret differences or changes in OHRQoL. Both of these methods of determining the MID have specific shortcomings; therefore, it is proposed to adopt triangulation approaches in which the methods are combined. The objective of this review is to summarize the need for, importance of, and recommendations for methods of establishing MID for OHRQoL measures.
近年来，在研究和临床环境中，对口腔健康相关生活质量（OHRQoL）工具的需求和使用都有所增加。这些工具可用于测量患者的健康状况，或检测患者健康状况在干预或疾病轨迹变化后的变化。为了确保这些措施被普遍接受，需要临床医生、研究人员和患者能够轻松解释其评分。描述和解释 OHRQoL 变化意义的最重要方法是通过建立最小重要差异（MID）。最小重要差异代表患者认为有价值的最小改善。通过对已发表文献的全面搜索，仅确定了 12 篇关于 OHRQoL 测量最小重要差异建立的已发表文章。关于 MID 的发表研究如此之少，这就鼓励需要在参考 MID 时，对患者满意度进行适当的解释和描述。锚定和分布为基础的方法是两种已经提出并推荐用于解释 OHRQoL 差异或变化的一般方法。这两种确定 MID 的方法都有其特定的缺点；因此，建议采用结合这两种方法的三角测量方法。本综述的目的是总结确定 OHRQoL 测量最小重要差异的必要性、重要性和方法建议。
