Abstract
In 1998, we introduced the oral care management system consisting of dental hygienists, nurses and dentists as the professional team. As of 1999, we started the bi-monthly bacterial culture examination by swabbing the surface of the tongue as a guideline for evaluating the effect of the oral care management. We provide the result of the bacterial culture examination to the other medical staffs as a countermeasure for controlling nosocomial infection and as a clinical information of oral microbial substitution. After incorporation of bacterial culture examination in 1999, the detection ratio of bacteria of all inpatients has decreased by 36% for MRSA and 35% for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. As for opportunistic pathogen, like Klebsiella or Serratia, decreases were also noted. Conclusively, the factors involved in this change are: (1) increase in awareness of infection (nosocomial or the other) by the oral care management staff, (2) providing immediate professional oral care during the acute stage, (3) recognition of correlation between nutrition control and oral care, all of the above mentioned factors are related with our study findings.
Bacteriological evaluation of our oral care management system is reported.
