Survey of New Patients in the Department of Operative Dentistry at the Dental Hospital of Nihon University School of Dentistry at Matsudo

Abstract

To determine the status of outpatients at the Dental Hospital of Nihon University School of Dentistry at Matsudo, we surveyed new patients examined in the Department of Operative Dentistry between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020. The following six items were extracted from the patients’ electronic dental records: referral（yes/no）, sex, age, residence, chief complaint, and site of chief complaint. Patients were subsequently divided into groups according to referral status for comparison of the other items. To identify factors associated with referrals, we performed logistic regression analysis with referral as the dependent variable and sex, address, age, chief complaint, and site as independent variables; odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for each variable. Odds ratios were high for age, site, chief complaint, and sex and yielded the following conclusions concerning these variables. Regarding age, most patients in the referral group were in their 40s and 50s, while most patients in the non-referral group were in their 60s and 70s. The majority of new patients were female, while the percentage of male patients was slightly higher in the referral group than in the non-referral group. The most common sites were the molars in both groups. The most common chief complaints in the referral group and the non-referral group were apical periodontitis and class 2 caries, respectively. These results suggested that compared with the non-referral group, patients in the referral group were younger, were diagnosed earlier, and visited our hospital with greater expectation of dental preservation through high-quality treatment.