2007 Volume 45 Issue 3 Pages 405-411
The purpose of this investigation was to understand the presently required role of the pediatric dentistry and to pursue the suitable correspondence. The subjects were 1418 first visit child patients in our pediatric dental clinic.
The following resu lts were obtained by this survey.
1. Many of the first visit patients in our clinic were non-cooperative and difficult patients during dental treatment.
2.62.6% of the patients were residents of the city of Morioka and its suburbs. The fact that 50.8% of the patients from other areas were referred by the local dentists indicated the role of this university clinic as a secondary-dental-care organization
3. The ratio of the referred patients to the entire number of first visit patients was 38.7%. The tendency of the number of referrals from practitioners and medical clinics in our university to increase indicated our position as a secondary-dental-care organization.
4. The most frequent (40.6%) reason for the visit to our clinic was dental caries and this reflects the demand for dental care for low aged or non-corporative patients
5. The number of dental caries of these patients was larg er than that of the average Japanese children surveyed by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the severity of dental caries also exceeded the average.
