2016 Volume 32 Issue 3 Pages 147-154
Abstract Dentists can diagnose most dental diseases using only information obtained verbally from patients. However, it is possible to obtain information in the mouth and by X-ray, so there is ambiguity regarding the basis of linguistic information.
We tried to clarify necessary linguistic information to reach a diagnosis of acute pericoronitis of wisdom tooth. We investigated whether there were differences in recognition among beginners and experts, and considered the linguistic information obtained from the differences between learning and clinical experience.
We conducted a questionnaire survey on 25 items of linguistic information using the Likert scale ranging from “5 : A positive diagnosis of acute pericoronitis of wisdom tooth” to “1 : A negative diagnosis of acute pericoronitis of wisdom tooth”. We analyzed statistically whether or not there are differences depending on clinical experience.
The analysis showed that information which can help dentists diagnose acute pericoronitis of wisdom tooth includes : “my gums are swollen”, “hard to open the mouth”, “lymph nodes are swollen”, “painful on swallowing saliva”, and “impacted tooth”.
By classifying the results into two groups according to the clinical experience of the dentist, a significant difference was observed in 12 items of language information. This result shows that dentists having a variety of clinical experience can recognize patterns more accurately.
