Ten-year trend of dental emergency visits in China: a cross-sectional study

Demand for dental emergency services has increased in recent years, creating an imbalance between service capacity and patient needs. To assess the status of dental emergency resources and provide insights for optimizing service allocation, this study examined the characteristics of visits to the largest dental emergency center in China.

This retrospective, repeated, cross-sectional study analyzed 396,383 dental emergency visits across all age groups at Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, from 2011 to 2020. Medical records, including age, sex, time, day, and disease type, were collected and analyzed.

A total of 206,006 male and 190,377 female patients were included in the study, with a sex ratio of 1.082:1. The most common age group was 19-39 years (35.25%), and infections and swelling were the most frequent emergencies (36.12%). Trauma was more prevalent in males (61.3%), whereas temporomandibular joint disease was more common in females (61.5%). The peak time period for significant differences in patient numbers was observed during the Chinese National Day Holiday compared to other holidays (p = 0.002), with similar trends observed for the Chinese Spring Festival (p = 0.049).

This study provides a comprehensive overview of dental emergency visits to China's largest center and highlights a substantial increase in cases during holidays, particularly the National Day Holiday. These findings support the need for optimizing emergency service allocation, including strategic dentist scheduling during peak periods.