Abstract
Prevention and control of nosocomial infection by blood-borne infectious diseases has become an important issue in general dental clinics and the dental division of general hospitals to ensure the safety of medical services. Therefore, we have investigated the present circumstances on prevention and control of nosocomial infection for the dental association members. The purpose of this study was to investigate variation in understanding of "Standard Precautions" (SP) among the dental association member populations defined by responses to the questionnaire items. A questionnaire survey on prevention and control of nosocomial infection was conducted for 760 dentists, namely, all members of the dental association in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The questionnaire included 22 question items: an age of objective dentists, prevention and control of nosocomial infection in daily dental practice and dental office management, and so on. The collected data were statistically analyzed using Principal Component Analysis on Variance/Covariance Matrix (PCA), one-way ANOVA, and Student's t-test. The major outcomes were as follows: 1. The percentage of responses to the whole questionnaire was 25.5% (194 dentists out of 760). 2. The one-way ANOVA analyses demonstrated significant differences in understanding about SP among the subgroups defined by the principal component variables comprising four question items for practicing clinical methods of SP (p<0.05). Similar observations were obtained when we adopted other sets of four question items for understanding of blood-borne infectious diseases, method of sterilizing or disinfecting dental tools after use, and managing and operating the dental office as the variables for group definition (p<0.05). However, significant differences were hardly observed in the set of four question items for other countermeasures on infection control (p≧0.05). 3. The Student's t-test analyses demonstrated that the respondent subgroups indicating careful practices of infection control and younger generation for variables with the highest PCA scores in the first principal component, such as "wearing and exchanging gloves","treating patients with AIDS or tuberculosis","disinfecting impressions, cast models and wax bites","educating dental staff on prevention and control of nosocomial infection", and "an age of objective dentists", were significantly deeper understanding about SP (p<0.05). These results suggest that there were close relations between understanding of SP among dentists and practicing prevention and control of nosocomial infection, and that dentists who have a deeper understanding of the concept of SP might provide better prevention and control of nosocomial infection in daily dental practice and dental office management.
