歯の喪失を確率論的に記述する数学モデルとその有効性

概要

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Few studies have taken the process of losing a present tooth into consideration up to now in oral epidemiology. Therefore, it seems to be important to study a mathematical model that enables us to take information on missing teeth and to analyze the risk of losing teeth in the future in order to offer helpful information for the prevention of dental diseases and health policies of the administration. Since the available nationwide statistical data are only from surveys of dental disease by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the model needed must be able to utilize these cross-sectional data effectively. The purpose of this study is to propose a mathematical model which is able to utilize these data on missing teeth effectively and can stochastically handle the missing teeth that have not been considered by conventional studies. Our basic idea was to describe the process of losing teeth as the pure birth process in the queuing theory. In order to investigate the validity of our mathematical model, we performed a simulation supposing some cases according to age and compared the probabilities of losing a tooth calculated by our model with values obtained from actual data and values estimated by a regression line.
2010-12-31