Association between place of dental check‐ups and work absenteeism among Japanese workers

OBJECTIVES: Dental check‐ups at the workplace provide the opportunity for early detection of dental diseases. Dental check‐ups during working hours could reduce the number of days of absence from work due to visits to dental clinics outside the workplace. Although health check‐ups are provided to workers in Japan, dental check‐ups is not mandatory. This study aimed to determine the association between the place of dental check‐ups and absenteeism due to visits to the dental clinic. METHODS: This cross‐sectional study used data from an online self‐reported worker survey conducted for 2 weeks in March 2017. We applied linear regression analysis with robust variance to determine the association between the place of dental check‐ups and absenteeism due to dental clinic visits while adjusting for sociodemographic, health, and oral health covariates. RESULTS: The average age of the 3930 participants was 43.3 ± 11.7 years, and 52.3% were male. The number of days of absenteeism due to dental clinic visits in the past year for those who received check‐ups only at the dental clinic and at the workplace were 0.57 ± 2.67 days and 0.21 ± 1.20 days, respectively. After adjusting for covariates, it was found that those who received dental check‐ups at the workplace had 0.35 (95% CI, 0.12–0.58) fewer days of absence than those who received dental check‐ups at the dental clinic. CONCLUSION: Workers who received dental check‐ups at the workplace were associated with fewer days of absence due to dental visits than those who received at the dental clinic.