From October in 2005 to September in 2006, among 1,110 for the first time pediatric patients visited our pediatric dentistry clinic in Chiba hospital,313 with clinical information forms or introduction letters from dental clinics or general hospitals were selected as subjects. The age of the patients at the time of the first visit, the type of treatment requested, medical condition, existence of developmental disability, location of medical institutions referring the patients and the places of residence of the patients were recorded and the following results were obtained.
1. The most common age group at the time of the first vis it for the 313 subjects was 3 to 7 years, accounting for more than half of them (173; 55.3%).
2. The most commonly requested treatment was caries treatment (139) followed by supernumerary teeth, traumatized teeth, retarded eruption, impacted teeth, malalignment and malocclusion.
3. Of requests for caries treatment,60% involved patients under 6 years of age. In the traumatized teeth group,40% of the patients were 1 to 2 years of age. Based on these results, it was assumed that medical institutions referring those patients had difficulty in treating young children.
4. The number of patients with a medical history of developmental disability was 44 (14.1%). They involved predominantly mental retardation, cardiac disease, asthma and autism.
5. Patients referred from medical departments (MD) amounted to 7 (2.2%). They involved pediatrics (4) plastic surgery (1), psychiatry (1), and obstetrics and gynecology (1).
6. Patients from Chiba were predominant in terms of both the locations of the medical institutions and their places of residence.
7. By active cooperation between hospital and clinic, the number of pediatric patients with letter of introduction from medical institutions in the community was on the increase in our pediatric clinic in Chiba Hospital.