Improvement of tooth-bleaching survey and its validation in French.

Comment on: “Prevalence and public knowledge regarding tooth bleaching in Saudi Arabia” by AlOtaibi et al.

Considering the importance aesthetics holds in the general population, the paper published by AlOtaibi et al. in 2020[1] was particularly interesting as it highlighted how patients may feel about whitening procedures. Indeed, it is more a question of the patient’s feelings and feedback than an assessment of their knowledge of bleaching procedures as the title of the paper suggests. If the questionnaire were to be used again, it could be renamed as “Prevalence and public feedback regarding tooth bleaching”.

It is interesting to highlight that the authors chose not to design their own survey using the well-known Dental Satisfaction Questionnaire (DSQ)[2] as they also wanted to ask some questions regarding the whitening methods received by the patients, their frequency, and the possible side effects.

The study was carried out on an interesting number of subjects (2543) and offers two results that must be highlighted: almost 40% of them have already undergone home whitening, and the same proportion had been informed of these therapies through advertising. The external validity of these results, therefore, appears to be high but remains limited to the Saudi population. In order to replicate the survey in other countries, it would have been interesting to have access to the questionnaire which, according to the authors, was disseminated through various social networks. We proceeded to use a retro design of the form to make it possible to validate it in the French language. The goal was to initiate a study similar to that of the authors on the French territory. To do so, we first collected all the answers presented in the study results and translated them into French. From the responses, we defined the corresponding questions and then translated them back into English. The proposed answers for each question were written and compared with the original answers described in the publication. The complete process was followed in accordance with the recommendations.[3] All is detailed, along with the final survey in French, in Supplementary File 1.

Additional suggestions were made, in particular, to include whitening strips for the patients in the suggested answers as it is available over-the-counter everywhere in the world. It would also be interesting to refer a more commonly used 5-point Likert satisfaction scale rather than the 4-point one because it takes into account the indecision of the patients.[4] Finally, the socio-professional categories should be modified to better correspond to an international classification.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

Tooth bleaching survey: validation in French