Abstract
The purpose of this survey was to examine 2-3 years-old and 4-5 years-old children, who visited the dental clinic for the first time, clarifying the differences in caries-related factors in these age groups. The subjects included in the survey were 134 patients (68 boys and 66 girls) aged 2 to 5 years who visited the Fujiwara Dental Clinic for the first time during the period of April 2016 to March 2019. The survey method was based on the medical records taken at the first visit, caries-related factors in particular, analyzing the differences in lifestyle and daily habits in the age groups of 2-3 years old (61 children) and 4-5 years old (73 children). As a result of the Fisher’s exact test, the factors significantly related (p <0.05) to the presence of caries for all the subjects were “sex” and “regularly eating sweets”, for 4-5 years-old children were “sex”, “use of tooth paste”, and “regularly eating sweets” while there were none for the 2-3 years-old group. Logistic regression analysis showed significantly related (p <0.05) factors as follows: in order of odds ratio, for all subjects “sweet snacks” and “sex”, for 2-3-year-olds “sex”, and for 4-5-year-olds “regularly eating sweets”, “use of tooth paste” and “sex”. The result of this survey showed that the factors associated with life such as “use of tooth paste” and “regularly eating sweets” were significantly related to caries in the group of 4-5 years old children but not in the group of 2-3 years old. It was suggested that improvement of lifestyle habits becomes increasingly important for caries prevention in the older preschool children.
