title: Validity of a questionnaire for periodontitis screening of Japanese employees.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Preventive Dentistry, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shikata-Cho, Okayama, Japan. tatsuo@md.okayama-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Tatsuo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yamamoto
authors.forename: Reiko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Koyama
authors.forename: Naofumi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tamaki
authors.forename: Takayuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Maruyama
authors.forename: Takaaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tomofuji
authors.forename: Daisuke
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ekuni
authors.forename: Reiko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yamanaka
authors.forename: Tetsuji
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Azuma
authors.forename: Manabu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Morita
mesh_terms: 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