2017 Volume 55 Issue 4 Pages 435-441
Elementary schools in Japan are committed to early discovery of child abuse and required to cooperate with other institutions such as dental services to prevent such abuse. However, the extent to which dental practitioners cooperate with schools remains limited. In the present study, we investigated the use of school dental examination data for early discovery of child abuse.
1)We examined the records of a total of 3569 elementary school students who underwent dental health examinations, of whom 89 were found to have been abused (abuse group).
2)Approximately 90% of all children had 2 or less deciduous teeth with untreated cavities.
3)A total of 95% of the children in the non-abuse group and 93.26% of those in the abuse group had no untreated cavities in permanent teeth.
4)A plaque score of zero was noted in 87.64% of the abuse group and 84.94% of the non-abuse group.
5)As for gingival inflammation score, that was zero in 87.04% of children in the non-abuse group and 91.01% of those in the abuse group.
No differences were found between abused and non-abused children in terms of the condition of their oral cavity. Our findings suggest that data collected from school dental health examinations are not useful to screen for possible child abuse. An environment in which dental practitioners spend time not only observing the oral cavity, but also the behavior of children and attitudes of their guardians is needed for early discovery and prevention of child abuse.
