The details of motivation of new students applying to this University’s Department of Oral Health Sciences are not fully elucidated. The purpose of this study is to support educational and public relations activities by analyzing questionnaires to clarify how new students knew the department and decided taking the entrance examination. The survey asked 75 new students (FY2021-2023) to answer the following questions: last year's status, origin prefectures, presence of medical professionals in own relationship, aspiration　reasons, and opportunities to know the department. The number of new students per 100,000 high school students was calculated by prefecture and by eight regions. The percentage of students who passed this university entrance examinations on the first try was 86.7%. Regarding the origin prefectures, 29.3% were from Fukuoka Prefecture, 17.3% from Hiroshima Prefecture, and 8.0% each from Kagoshima and Kumamoto Prefectures. Hiroshima prefecture had the highest number of new students per 100,000 high school students. The percentage of students who had their own relatives in the medical profession was 37.3%. The reasons for aspiration were “high national examination pass rate” 45.3%, “appropriate deviation” and “attractive curriculum” 38.7% each, “good employment rate” 37.3%, “useful career development in the workplace” 36.0%, and “bachelor's degree” 32.0%. The opportunities to know this department were websites 30.7%, high school teachers 25.3%, university guidance 20.0%, and guardians 18.7%. High national examination pass rate, attractive curriculum, good employment rate, career development, and bachelor's degree were considered to be reflected in their aspiration motivation. The large number of opportunities to collect information from the website, high school teachers, and guardians suggested that enhancement of the website, strategical high school visits and publicity activities would increase examinees number.

View full abstract

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), in which intermittent apnea repeatedly occurs during sleep, not only is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and arrhythmia and serious systemic conditions such as diabetes, but also affects daily life through effects such as daytime drowsiness. The causes of OSA are complex, involving both morphological and functional abnormalities. Since April 2014, oral appliance (OA) therapy for OSA has been covered by dental health insurance, and a system has been developed to handle this by means of collaboration between doctors and dentists. Under the current dental insurance system, OA fabrication is only permitted via an indirect process through which an OA fabrication request is received on the basis of a patient referral document from a medical department. OAs mechanically move the lower jaw anteriorly, placing the hyoid, which is connected to the lower jaw, and its surrounding soft tissues under anterior traction so as to enlarge the airway. Ideally, once the patient is confirmed to be using the OA frequently and to have no issues such as temporomandibular symptoms or occlusal changes, and the subjective symptoms are confirmed to have improved, the referring medical institution should be requested to carry out further investigations to assess the response to treatment. In light of the results of these investigations, it is important to consider the therapeutic jaw position of the OA. In this paper, we describe the type of collaboration between dentists involved in OA treatment, attending physicians from referring medical institutions, and dental technicians.

View full abstract

The arrival of a super-aging society has shifted the structure of diseases to lifestyle-related diseases and action to sarcopenia and frailty are strongly required in Japan today, therefore it is essential that dental professionals have knowledge about assessing nutritional status. This article outlines the nutritional knowledge that dental professionals should know to address the issues of malnutrition and overnutrition, including methods for assessing nutritional status and the relationship between nutritional status and prosthetic treatment intervention. Keywords: nutritional status assessment, prosthetic treatment

View full abstract