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[Development of the Oral Assessment Scale for Post-Operational Patients With Oral Cancer].

BACKGROUND
Current oral assessment scales are designed to assess the severity of oral health in cancer patients who have undergone radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Currently, no scale is available that assesses the overall oral health situation of patients. However, this type of scale is critical for guiding nursing staff to understand the oral status of postoperative patients and for facilitating the development of patient-centered oral nursing treatments.


PURPOSE
To develop the oral assessment scale for post-operational patients with oral cancer (OASPOCa) and establish its psychometric properties.


METHODS
The ten associated items of the OASPOCa were determined using a series of five professional council meetings and two verifications of content validity by 5 experts in the field of oral cancer care. A pilot study was conducted on 30 participants and a formal study was conducted on 100 participants at the ICU and the oral and maxillofacial surgery ward at a medical center in southern Taiwan. All of the participants were oral cancer patients who had been admitted to excise tumors of oral cancer. None of the participants had been treated previously for oral cancer using chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), internal consistency reliability, and concurrent validity of the OASPOCa were evaluated.


RESULTS
A content validity of 1.0 was obtained. The inter-rater reliability assessment in the pilot study yielded ICCs of .97 for two assessment items ("lips" and "tongue") and 1.0 for the remaining eight items. The Cronbach's α coefficient was .72 for the OASPOCa. Further, a statistically significant negative relationship was found between overall oral status and oral comfort level (r = -.93, p < .001).


CONCLUSIONS / IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
The oral assessment scale for post-operational patients with oral cancer was found to have good reliability and validity. This scale is a reliable tool for assessing the oral status of postoperative oral cancer patients.