Abstract
To investigate how the school dental health examination and post-examination care are actually carried out, we sent questionnaires to primary and junior high schools throughout the nation. A total of 398 schools responded to our survey. The found that all the schools conduct dental health examination on a regular basis, and that, in 90 % of the schools infirmarians receive instructions and guidance from school dentists based on the results of examinations. Most of the schools tell students and their parents about the examination results and, if necessary, advise them to go to the dentist. However, the survey found that many schools do not do anything about students who were absent from school on the very day of the examination. As many as 50 % of the junior high schools had this attitude. Nearly half of the school principals and upwards of 50 % of class teachers did not know of school dentists instractions. Again, over 50 % of the schools were not interested in epidemiological analysis of dental examination results. More than 30 % of the schools did not inform the school dentists of the final analyses of the data. Our findings suggested that school dental health examination are conducted only as part of mandatory health management in many schools. Few schools have a health program harmoniously incorporating health education and health management with dental hygiene. In this paper, we discuss what schools should do and what school dentists activities should be, on the basis of our findings.
