Comparison of photographic and visual assessment of occlusal caries with histology as the reference standard

BMC Oral Health

Research Article

Tanya Walsh¹  Iain A Pretty²  Uriana Boye³  Martin Tickle³ 

[1] The Cochrane Oral Health Group, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, Manchester, UK;The Dental Health Unit, 3A Skelton House, M15 6SH, Lloyd Street North, Manchester, UK;The Oral Health Unit, School of Dentistry, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, Manchester, UK;

关键词: Dental Caries;    Visual Examination;    Occlusal Surface;    Water Fluoridation;    Caries Detection;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6831-12-10

 received in 2011-09-27, accepted in 2012-04-27,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to compare diagnostic performance for the detection of caries using photographs with an established visual examination method and histological sections as the reference standard.Methods50 extracted permanent teeth were assessed for the presence of occlusal caries by 9 examiners using two methods; traditional visual examination developed by BASCD and photographs produced by an intra-oral camera. For both methods, diagnoses were made at “caries into dentine” level. The teeth were histologically sectioned and the diagnostic decisions using visual and photographic assessment were compared to the histological reference standard. Inter- and intra- examiner reliability for the methods was assessed and weighted kappa values were calculated.ResultsThe visual examination method had a median sensitivity value of 65.6% and a median specificity value of 82.4%. The photographic assessments method had a median sensitivity of 81.3% and a median specificity of 82.4%.ConclusionsThe photographic assessments method had a higher sensitivity for caries detection than the visual examination. The two methods had comparable specificities and good intra- and inter- examiner reliability.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Boye et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.