RATING THE PREVENTIVE INDICATION FOR MANDIBULAR 3RD-MOLAR SURGERY - THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE VISUAL ANALOG SCALE

The aim was to determine whether a visual analogue scale (VAS) is an a ppropriate way for general dental practitioners and oral surgeons to r ate their judgement of the indication for therapy of asymptomatic mand ibular third molars. Thirty general dental practitioners and 10 oral s urgeons had to judge the need for removal of 36 third molars. They wer e also asked to estimate the strength of the indication for extraction on a VAS. To assess the reliability of the judgement, the 36 cases we re duplicated. For each participant, two mean indication indices with 95% confidence limits were calculated, one index for molars proposed t o be extracted and one index for molars proposed not to be extracted. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to estimate the intra-exami ner reliability and the correlation between the number of molars propo sed for extraction and the mean indication index. The correlation betw een the number of molars proposed to be extracted and the mean indicat ion index was high (p < 0.001). The intra-examiner reliability was als o high, with a mean correlation coefficient of 0.72 for the general pr actitioners and 0.84 for the oral surgeons. No single judge presented any overlap for the 95% confidence limits for the mean indication inde x of teeth proposed to be extracted versus teeth proposed nor to be ex tracted. These results indicate that the VAS seems to be an appropriat e method for analyzing the judgements on a therapeutic strategy Like e xtraction versus no intervention for asymptomatic mandibular third mol ars.