III. Dental needs

according to length of time since last visit to a dentist

The relationship between dental needs and age was presented in the preceding chapter. Nonetheless, age, since it is such an important factor in the dental needs picture, cannot be ignored in studies of relationships between needs and other variables.

Therefore, age has been retained in this comparison of needs by length-of-time groups, and will be retained in subsequent comparisons. However, it has been necessary to combine the fiveyear age groups presented in Chapter II into broader groups to provide adequate samples for reliable percentages and averages by other variables. This chapter and subsequent ones will not present all types of needs covered in the preceding chapter; rather, a selection has been made to show representative needs (Table 13).

For length-of-time groups, as for other groupings, the visit made to the dentists on the day of the survey was either the first visit of a series or the only visit deemed necessary at that time.

Because of the small differences between the sexes in regard to dental needs, particularly according to other variables, and for reliability

considerations, the sexes are, for the most part, combined in this and subsequent chapters.

Although length of time since last visit to a dentist provides an interesting and significant basis for study of dental needs, it is not an accurate measure of regularity of attendance at the dentist. Of those patients who last saw a dentist 6 months previously, probably most had been obtaining dental treatment with the recommended frequency for a number of years. Among this group, however, it is reasonably safe to say that there were some patients who were negligent in earlier years.

To study the relationship between visiting a dentist and existing dental needs in an ideal manner would have required obtaining a complete history of each patient's visits to dentists. Since this was not practicable, length of time since last visit was used as an index.

Table 14 indicates a definite relationship between patient income and frequency of visits to a dentist. Income is highest in the "less than 6 months" and "6-11 months" groups. These are the groups that apparently contain the highest percentage of patients who see a dentist with the recommended frequency.

It will be noted that among children 14 years of age and under the number of fillings required

Table 13 Dental needs of 11,357 white patients, by length of time since last visit to a dentist and by age

Table 13 Dental needs of 11,357 white patients, by length of time since last visit to a dentist and by age-continued

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persons relatively immune to dental caries.

A pronounced increase in percentage of patients needing complete dentures occurred in the "more than 3 years" group as compared with the "3 years" group.

Those patients who had last seen a dentist within the preceding 6 months averaged nearly twice the number of permanent teeth missing as those who last saw a dentist between 6 and 11 months previously. The probable explanation for this fact is that there were included in this group of patients many with generally poorer dental health. It may be noted that the need for complete dentures in this group is also greater. Some dentists may have inadvertently included some patients in process of having dentures fitted. The number of permanent teeth previously replaced by dentures and bridges does not vary as much as most of the figures with length of time since the last visit to a dentist.

The percentage of patients with no dental needs other than prophylaxis was highest in the