Abstract

The present study was undertaken to examine the relationship between time required for each step in the treatment process for pedodontic patients. and age of the patients, and experience of special training for pedodontics and career of dental practitioners. Information of these matters was gained from 580 questionnaires collected from 69 practitioners (62 male and 7 female). The questionnaires included questions about the patients' sex(303 male and 207 female) and age. The patients were categorized into 5 different age groups : Group 1, age $1{\sim}3$-year ; Group 2, $4{\sim}6$-year ; Group 3, $7{\sim}9$-year ; Group 4, $10{\sim}12$-year ; Group 5, $13{\sim}15$-year. The questions about the dental practitioners were the years of experience in private dental practice(5 years or more than 5 years) and whether or not they took the special training for pedodontics in the authorized institutes. The practitioners were asked to answer the questions about Frankl scale of the patients' behavior during the treatment, and time spent for managing the patients to be subjected to local anesthetic injection (the first behavior control), time for the injection, and time for the subsequent treatment. The results obtained by analyzing the information collected from the questionnaires were as follows : 1. The younger the patients, the lower the Frankl scale was counted at the time of the first behavior control, injection, and the subsequent treatment(p<0.001). 2. The lowest Frankl scale was scored during the injection regardless of the age of the patients. 3. Time for management and treatment was decreased in the order of age Groups 1 and 2< Group 3 < Groups 4 and 5. 4. The patients showed a more positive frankl scale in response to the treatment performed by those who were more-experienced in dental practice as compared with those were less-experienced. 5. Pedodontic training experience of the practitioners did not appear to influence the patients with respect to the treatment time and Frankl scale.

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