REPRODUCIBILITY OF CLINICAL CARIES DIAGNOSES ON CORONAL AND ROOT SURFACES

Intra- and interexaminer reproducibility of clinical caries diagnoses was studied using 3 experienced dentists, who independently examined 2 0 patients twice at an interval of 2-6 weeks. The lesions were classif ied as one of the following four diagnoses: (1) initial active caries, (2) initial inactive caries, (3) manifest active caries, and (4) mani fest inactive caries. For the various diagnoses, signs of cavitation, surface structure and discolouration were used. The reproducibility at a patient level was evaluated using intraclass correlation coefficien ts and at a surface level using kappa statistics. At a patient level, for the total number of lesions, the intraclass coefficients of correl ation varied from 0.55 to 0.77. For the individual diagnoses, total ma nifest caries showed the highest coefficients of correlation, ranging from 0.73 to 0.92. At a tooth surface level, the kappa values varied f rom 0.29 to 0.61. The most common shift was that from any type of cari es diagnosis to a diagnosis of a sound surface. There was little diffe rence between the results for coronal and root caries and between init ial and manifest lesions. Nor was there any difference for buccal + li ngual surfaces only compared to all surfaces. Judging from the pattern of change in diagnosis between the repeated examinations, the main so urce of error seemed to be due to the fact that the lesions observed a t one examination were overlooked at the other examination.