Validity of a questionnaire for periodontitis screening of Japanese employees.
OBJECTIVE
Workplaces are suitable for screening for periodontal disease effectively. However, the majority of workplaces do not have a screening program. One possible reason may be that pocket probing, which is commonly used for the screening, needs qualified examiners and is time-consuming. In this study, the validity of a self-reported questionnaire was assessed for screening of periodontitis in 50- to 59-yr-old male employees in Japan.


METHODS
A total of 250 people were asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire regarding signs and symptoms of periodontal disease, and experience of periodontal treatment, followed by a clinical examination by a dentist. Subjects with at least one tooth having a clinical attachment loss of 7 mm or more were defined as periodontitis patients.


RESULTS
Thirteen percent of the subjects were diagnosed as having periodontitis. Logistic regression selected 4 questions, "Are you a current or past smoker?", "Have your gums bled recently?", "Do you think that you can see more roots of teeth than in the past?", and "Have you ever been told that you need periodontal or gum treatment?" as potential predictors of periodontitis. When subjects with at least 3 "yes" responses to the 4 questions were separated from the others, the subjects with periodontitis were separated most effectively (showing the highest sensitivity + specificity: 1.524) from those without. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.81.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that the self-reported questions are useful for screening of periodontitis in 50- to 59-yr-old Japanese workers.
Yamamoto
Tatsuo
T
Department of Preventive Dentistry, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shikata-Cho, Okayama, Japan. tatsuo@md.okayama-u.ac.jp
Koyama
Reiko
R
Tamaki
Naofumi
N
Maruyama
Takayuki
T
Tomofuji
Takaaki
T
Ekuni
Daisuke
D
Yamanaka
Reiko
R
Azuma
Tetsuji
T
Morita
Manabu
M
D005884:Gingival Hemorrhage / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D016272:Occupational Health; D010518:Periodontitis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012907:Smoking; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires