Abstract
Purpose: Production of dental prosthesis by a dental technician causes a loud noise. Thus, we investigated stress of dental technicians due to a noise using a structured questionnaire. Methods: A survey was conducted on working dental technicians across the country from July 2013 to November 2013; among 200 sets of survey distributed, 166 were completed and returned, and excluding the 11 that deemed unsuitable, 155 sets were used for statistics. The program SPSS 19.0 was used to analyze the correlation among the collected data. Results: The stress of noise was found to be 2.83/5 points (2.93/5 for physical stress, 2.72/5 for emotional stress). Recognition of noise was found to be 2.71/5 points (3.39/5 for recognition of noise, 2.64/5 for accidents caused by noise, 2.29/5 for experiencing disability due to noise). For general items, the highest stress were shown for the following catogories: by gender, females (p=.008); by position, chief engineer (p=.033); by monthly pay, 2.51M-3.0M KRW (p=.023); by interior comfort, 'very unpleasant' was the highest recognized (p=.014). For the effect of time exposed to noise, its stress (p=.000) and recognition (p=.000) rose with increase of time. Conclusion: Dental technicians performs tasks in work environments exposed to extreme noise. This research attempts to re-emphasize the necessity for improving the work environment for noise and provide measures of blocking noise and precaution.