An Attempt to Evaluate the Dental Treatment Adaptability of Patients with Pervasive Developmental Disorder （PDD）

Abstract

Aims：To establish a simple method of evaluating the dental treatment adaptability of patients with PDD.

Methods：We created a dental treatment adaptability evaluation table consisting of 26 items in 8 categories and asked patients’ parents to answer the questionnaire. Sixteen patients （12 males and 4 females, 6-19 years old） participated in this study and were divided into two groups depending on the state of their dental treatment adaptability. The first group consisted of patients who were emotionally compromised and the second group consisted of patients requiring special treatment. Then, we compared the two groups on the evaluation items. Statistical analyses were conducted using Mann-Whitney’s U test.

Results：1. Regarding age, there was no significant difference between the two groups. 2. For the two categories of cognitive ability and sensitivity, there was a significant difference between the two groups at p＜0.01. 3. For the two items of taste and hearing, there was a significant difference between the two groups at p＜0.05.

Conclusions：The patients requiring special treatment were strongly correlated with the categories of “low cognitive ability” and “high sensitivity” in this questionnaire, suggesting that these categories are important for the dental treatment of patients with PDD. Our questionnaire could be a useful and simple method of evaluating the dental treatment adaptability of patients with PDD.