Examinations were performed on 585 Army Reserve Component soldiers dur
ing their 2-week Annual Training at Fort Pickett, Virginia, from June
through September 1991. Of the 585 soldiers examined, 338 (57.8%) were
in class 3 using the current DoD criteria. while 272 (46.5%) were in
class 3 using the previous criteria. Of 585 paired examinations, there
was agreement between the two systems in 531 (90.8%) examinations. Ov
er 96% of the disagreement represented patients put in class 2 under t
he old system who were put in class 3 under the new system. In the agg
regate, there were 19.3% more soldiers put into class 3 under the new
system. The major source of this difference was partially erupted or p
ericoronally involved third molars. The increase in the class 3 propor
tion is due to the lack of operational criteria in the old system. Dat
a collected under the current system provide more detailed information
for administrative epidemiologic purposes. Because of the additional
clinical guidelines under the current DoD criteria, the inevitable dif
ferences should be considered when pre- and post-DoD instruction denta
l fitness classification data are compared for a population.