Abstract
This survey was conducted to investigate oral health status of new patients at dental clinics practicing routine maintenance. Subjects were collected in anonymised digital format from Japan Health Care Dental Association (JHCDA) member clinics. The subjects of this 12th survey included 12,684 new patients (5,448 male and 7,236 female patients) who visited the 52 member clinics (across 24 prefectures) during the period between January 1st and December 31st, 2017. For children and minors, the DMFT scores were recorded, and for adults the DMFT scores, the number of remaining teeth, the condition of periodontal tissues and smoking status were recorded. As a result, the DMFT index continued to decrease across all age groups above 12 years old; the prominent decrease of male smoking population across all age groups continued; and the number of remaining teeth continued to increase across age groups above 65 years old in both male and female population. Also, the subjects were divided into 4 groups based on the amount of municipal or ward tax according to the location of the participating clinics. The findings include; ① inter-regional economic disparities were reflected in DMFT index in relation to the number of children with pronouncedly high caries experience; and ② in the population 50 years old and over, tax-amount-per-capita and the average remaining teeth are directly proportional among 4 groups—the higher the local tax the more remaining teeth, as seen in the last year’s result, but the narrowing trend over time was observed in the health disparities.
