A Survey on the Dental Treatment for the Disable and Medically Compromised Children in Pediatric Dentists in Private Practice

1.Actual Status

Abstract

In order to investigate the actual status of the dental treatment for disabled patients in private practice, we conducted questionnaire surveys and got answers from 450 specialists out of 1404 specialists in private practice that provided pediatric dentistry (a response rate of 32.1%).About half of the respondents (48.7%) had 26−30 years of clinical experience. A ratio of the number of disabled children to all patients in most private practices was 1−5%. A small number of respondents (13.3%) separated the time for the treatment between normal and disabled children. And most of the reasons for visiting the private practice were consisted of the patient's or their parent's own motive. These results indicated that expert specialists in each area had been performing comprehensive and high-quality treatment for disabled children as well as the normal patients, regardless of the patient's age. And it seemed that the specialists in private practice played a role as primary care dentists for the patients. On the other hand, there was great variability related to the age of the respondents in these questionnaire surveys. Therefore, it seemed to be necessary for specialists over generations to share the information for technology and knowledge associated with the dental treatment for disabled children.