A new dental unit for both patients in wheelchairs and general patients.

Objective: To develop a dental unit to accommodate both patients in wheelchairs and general patients, and to evaluate the acceptability of the new chair for patients and dentists.

Design: To integrate a unit for patients in wheelchairs and a unit for general patients into a single dental unit.

Results: (1) The newly developed dental unit could be used for both patients in wheelchairs and general patients and could be installed in nearly the same space as occupied by a conventional dental unit. (2) The dentists could take the home position because of the height-adjusting and tilting mechanisms. (3) The patients could be treated with a sense of assurance because of the wheelchair immobilizer and the safety devices. (4) The dentists could perform patient treatment safely. (5) As patients did not need to be transferred from their wheelchairs, assistance was unnecessary. (6) From the questionnaires, both patients and dentists rated the newly developed dental unit favourable.

Conclusions: The new dental unit for patients in wheelchairs and general patients permitted dentists to perform and patients to receive dental treatment safely and in a comfortable position. Also, as a single unit could be used for treatment of both types of patients, it required no extra space. Therefore, it has the potential to be installed in the clinics of general dental practitioners to treat both groups of patients.