ACCURACY OF DENTAL HYGIENISTS IN DIAGNOSING DENTAL DECAY

During recent decades, the duties and care rendered by Swedish dental hygienists have continuously expanded, and since 1991 they are license d to practice dental hygiene independently. The aim of the present stu dy was to investigate the accuracy of dental hygienists in examining a nd recording dental caries in comparison with dentists performing iden tical examinations. The study including two parts A) Registration of c arious lesions from radiographs of 100 extracted teeth, where the corr ect diagnosis could be verified, and B) clinical examination and regis tration of carious lesions in 213 patients. No statistically significa nt differences could be found between the dental hygienists' and their control dentists' accuracy to diagnose and record dental decay, with the exception of the number of initial lesions (white spot lesions) re gistered clinically, where the dental hygienists recorded more buccal and lingual lesions. Irrespective of the group of examiners (dental hy gienists or dentists), however, the inter-examiner variation was wide. The variation decreased with the size of the lesion and increased wit h the age of the patient. This study suggests that no patient with a r estorative treatment need would have been neglected if the dental hygi enists had performed the examination, and, possibly, a more accurate n on-restorative treatment need would have been addressed.