1987 Volume 25 Issue 1 Pages 156-168
The subjects were 1258 children who appeared at the Pediatric Dentistry Clinic of Nagasaki University Dental Hospital during the period from June 1983to December 1985.
The purpose of this study is to understand the actual condition and the state of the recall visit of the patients who appeared at our clinic, and to compare the results for each year.
Concerning the making of appointments for the recall visit, we did not send cards or make telephone calls to the patients so the patients themselves had to make a telephone call to arrange an appointment.
The results were as follows.
1) The rate of the patie nts who were making their first time recall visit was 41.6% on the average for each year. The rate of the patients who continued making recall visits for more than 2 years was 21.6%.
2) The average age of the patients was 5 years 7 months and the percentage of the patients aged from 3 years to 6 years was 50.8%. The lower the age of the patient, the high was the rate of the recall visits, while the rate of pre-school children was higher than that of school children.
3) The rate of the patients who spent under 1 hour for the visit was 65.8%. There was no difference between the rate of the patients who were making their recall visit and the time spent visiting the clinic.
4) When the patients were divided according to the motivation of the first visit to our clinic, the rate of the patients who made recall visits (51.4%) was highest when the motivation was that they were recommended to come by another patient of our clinic.
5) The rate of the patients who made recall visit was higher in cases in which the chief complaints of the first visit were tooth shape anomalies (62.5%), caries prevention (61.1 %) and swelling (52.6%) than the cases of tooth extraction (14.3%), trauma (22.6%) and tooth pain (28.1%).
6) The number of caries decayed teeth at the first oral examination was higher in the group for patients making their first recall visit (9.81 teeth) than in the group of patients rejecting a recall visit (8.76 teeth).
7) In the case of the patients to whom space retainers and orthodontic appliances were applied, the rate of making recall visits increased over the years and the rate in 1985 was 74.5%.
8) The number and the rate of generally diseased children were 229 (18.2%). There was no difference in the rate of those making their first time recall visit between generally diseased children and non-diseased children. However the rate of patients who were operated under general anesthesia or sedation and made recall visits increased over the years and the rate in 1985 was 75%.
