2018 Volume 56 Issue 4 Pages 434-440
Oral health management has been provided for more than 45 years at our oral care center. For a better understanding of the oral conditions of recent child patients, data for age and gender, as well as dental caries in primary teeth, use of dental floss, and presence of interdental spaces and occlusal patterns were obtained from records of dental examinations performed from April 2016 to March 2017 and analyzed. There was a total of 273 patients (155 boys, 118 girls) examined during the study period, including 69 who were 2 years old (36 boys, 33 girls), 80 between 3 and 4 years old (49 boys, 31 girls), 74 between 4 and 5 years old (44 boys, 30 girls), and 50 aged 5 years (26 boys, 24 girls). Caries prevalence rates were 0.0%, 3.8%, 6.8%, and 8.0%, while dft indexes were 0.00, 0.04, 0.11,and 0.28, respectively, in those age groups. Both caries prevalence rates and dft indexes for all age groups were lower than in a Japan national survey of dental diseases, especially for the 4- and 5-year old patients, which were remarkably low. Additionally, dental floss usage rates were 33.3% (n＝23 people), 51.3% (n＝41), 59.5% (n＝44), and 62.0% (n＝31), respectively, in the age groups. The frequency of use dental floss was found to increase in the order of “occasionally”, “every day”, and “several times a week”. We found that 100% of the patients with decayed and filled primary teeth in the 4- and 5-year-old groups used floss. Dental floss usage by patients without dental caries increased with age.
Closed dentition was observed in 45.0% of all patients, with a prevalence ranging from 53.8% to 56.5% in those aged from 2 to 3 years and from 32.4% to 34.0% in the 4- and 5-year-old children. As for occlusal patterns, normal occlusion was the most common seen in all age groups, with prevalence ranging from 42.5% to 48.6% in patients aged 2-4 years and 64.0% in those aged 5 years. Deep overbite was the most common malocclusion category in this cohort and showed a decreasing trend with age, as it was seen in 39.1%, 41.3%, 32.4%, and 20.0% of our 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old patients, respectively. On the other hand, the incidence of anterior end-to-end bite increased with age and reached 10.0% in the 5-year-old group.
