146 Chapter 7 Dry‑mouth intervention strategies in the total samle Tables 4 and 5 show the dry-mouth interventions that were applied by the total study sample. Most of the patients (87.9%) reported the use of multiple interventions (≥ 2) to relieve their dry-mouth complaints. Only 3.2% reported use of a single intervention and 8.9% of the patients did not use any intervention. Obviously, “drinking water” was the most frequently used intervention by all patients, followed by “moistening the lips” and “rinsing the mouth”. Less frequently used interventions were “using pilocarpine” and “using acupuncture”. The spontaneously reported “other interventions” included “oil pulling”, “using fluoride in a fluoride tray”, “using specialized toothpaste or mouth washes”, “using milk”, “using a nasal spray”, “changing diet” and “doing yoga, cycling or walking”. Dry‑mouth interventions in the various patient subgroups Table 4 displays the dry-mouth interventions frequently used for each of the patient subgroups. The interventions “drinking tea”, “sucking candies”, “chewing gum” and “focusing on other activities” did not differ significantly among the various patients. On the other hand, SS and SS + High Med patients used all other interventions significantly more often than the controls or Low Med patients. High Med patients used interventions, such as “rinsing the mouth”, “eating fruit”, “drinking small volume” and “drinking coffee”, significantly more than controls. No significant differences were observed between Low and High Med patients, except for “drinking small volumes” to relieve oral dryness. Also, SS, SS + High Med and High Med patients did not show any significant difference in the percentage of used dry-mouth interventions, except for “moistening the lip”, which was more often used by SS and SS + High Med patients. The use of interventions by RTX patients did not differ significantly from all other patient subgroups. For the less frequently used interventions (Table 5), the patient subgroups only differed in “no intervention”; however, for “no intervention”, there were no significant differences among the subgroups after Bonferroni correction.
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