50 Chapter 3 Recently, it was shown that a new questionnaire, the Regional Oral Dryness Inventory (RODI), could be used to determine differences in dry-mouth perception at different locations in the mouth [13]. The study in question concluded that the dry-mouth feeling differed significantly among intra-oral locations, with the highest perceived oral dryness in the posterior palate and the lowest in the floor of the mouth. It was speculated that, clinically, the RODI might help to discriminate between different potential causes of oral dryness in patients. It was thus hypothesized that patients with oral dryness caused by irradiation of the head and/or neck region might have a different distribution of intra-oral dryness than those with Sjögren’s disease or medication-induced dry mouth [13]. The main aim of this study was therefore to determine whether the RODI might help to discriminate between causes of oral dryness in dry-mouth patients. To contribute to the study of dry-mouth diagnostics, the second aim was to ascertain whether the RODI might become an additional diagnostic tool in dry-mouth patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS Study design Data for this retrospective case report study were collected from patients at the saliva clinic of the Dutch Institute for Salivary Research in Bunschoten, the Netherlands. They had been referred to this clinic by their dentists, general physicians, and medical specialists between October 2012 and April 2019. All patients had hyposalivation, xerostomia, hypersalivation, or other salivarelated problems. The study was approved by the Ethics Review Committee at the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA, protocol number 201951). The reporting of this study conforms to the STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement [14]. All data, questionnaires, and clinical variables were collected and interpreted by a single practitioner (CB) according to the standard operating procedures of the regular patient-care routine, which generally took approximately 25 min. Data collectionmethods The relevant data were extracted from the medical record by two abstractors (HZA and SSG). The following clinical data were retrieved: age, sex, health status, number of medications used, Xerostomia Inventory (XI) scores, Regional Oral Dryness Inventory scores, salivary flow rate and salivary pH of unstimulated
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