55 Differences in perceived intra-oral dryness The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the different patient characteristics and RODI scores for all the various patient groups, followed by the Mann-Whitney U test as a post-hoc procedure. The possible association between the RODI scores and the total XI scores was analyzed with a bootstrapped Spearman’s rank correlation test (1000 × bootstrapping). The Spearman’s rho coefficient and Bias-corrected accelerated (Bca) 95% confidence interval were extracted. The effect size of the correlation coefficient was interpreted as a negligible (r = 0.1–0.2), fair (r = 0.3–0.5), moderate (r = 0.6–0.7), or very strong (r = 0.8–0.9) correlation [22]. All significance levels (α) were set at 0.05. RESULTS Total study sample A total of 528 health records were available. The mean age of participants in this study was 59.6± 16.0 years (N=522; the age of 6 participants was not documented). A majority of the patients were female (68.4%) (N=525; the gender of 3 participants was not documented). The RODI scores, XI scores, UWS, CHSWS, A-SWS salivary flow rates, and salivary pH were not normally distributed (Shapiro–Wilk test; p<0.01). Table 2 presents the various total XI scores, salivary flow rates, and salivary pH of the study sample. The flow rates suggested that the following proportions of the study sample were considered to have hyposalivation: UWS (33.4%), CH-SWS (55.2%), and A-SWS (29.6%). The mean number of medications used was 3 ±4, with a median of 2 and IQR of 0–4 (N =518; the number of medications was not listed for 10 participants). Regional Oral Dryness Inventory for the total study sample Table 3 shows the medians, corresponding IQRs, and means with standard deviations for each of the eight intra-oral regions of the RODI. Perceived oral dryness in the overall sample differed significantly among the eight intraoral regions (Friedman test p<0.05, followed by Wilcoxon signed-rank test). The highest scores were found for the posterior part of the palate, and the lowest for the inside cheeks (Table 3). 3
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