Abstract
It is well recognized that the concept and methods of the behavior management, oral health and dental treatment for children with special needs has changed dramatically in the last few decades in Japan. This review summarizes those changes and trends from the clinical point of view and contains the following 5 topics discussed in the lecture at the 47th Annual Meeting of The Japanese Society of Pediatric Dentistry, May 14, 2009.1.Trends of behavior management modalities, changing from physical ones to psychological or pharmacological, for dental patients with special needs.2.An increasing number of children with developmental disorders such as learning disability (LD),attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its dental importance.3.Newly arising dental problems accompanied with increased life expectancy of vulnerable child with special needs and frail elderly.4.Remarkable bipolar phenomenon of dental condition in children with special needs, one showing severely deteriorated dental condition in a small population and the other showing to be generally healthy in a large.5.Importance of transdiciplinary approaches provided by dental and/or medical professionals to special needs patients with dental disease or oral dysfunction.
