Abstract
The Heisei Era ended at the end of April 2019 and the Reiwa Era began.
For about 30 years in the Heisei era after the Showa era, the environment surrounding children changed rapidly, including the economic downturn, the acceleration of late marriage and declining birthrate, and progress in information and communication technology. As a result, individual households have diversified and a large polarization has become apparent. As pediatric dentists, we need to deal with and support children with all kinds of problems. Therefore, to clarify the transition of the first-visit patients in our clinic, we categorized the 30 years from 1989 to 2018 by five-year groups: early (1989-1993), middle (1997-2001) and late (2013-2018) stages, with a total of 5,892 patients, and then investigated and analyzed their properties. As a result, the number of new patients decreased from 2,477 in the early stage to 1,301 in the late stage. The male-female ratio was approximately 1:1 in each period. As for age, school age was the highest at about 40%, and there was no significant change in the age composition in each period. The most common chief complaint during each period was tooth decay, but it decreased from 44% in the early stage to 27% in the late stage. The proportion of children who brought a letter of referral increased from 23% in the early stage to 83% in the late stage, and the proportion of children with disabilities and illness increased from 13.8% in the early stage to 33% in the late stage. Compared to the early days, the chief complaints have diversified, and it has become clear that the functional differentiation of general dental clinics and university hospitals is progressing. Furthermore, it was suggested that the importance of medical and dental cooperation will increase in the future.
