| Summary: |
To develop a method for recording dental caries at the D1
(enamel and dentine) diagnostic threshold (without loss of D3 information) and
assess its reliability, ‘benchmark’ validity and potential effects on reported caries
prevalence and needs assessment. Methods: Multi-examiner training, calibration
and validation trial. Two groups of 10 dental examiners were trained to diagnose
dental caries at the D1 (enamel and dentine) diagnostic threshold under the conditions
of a caries prevalence survey, prior to a calibration trial being undertaken.
Results: Where ‘experienced examiners’ were trained to examine at the D1 (enamel
and dentine) diagnostic threshold, under the conditions of a cross-sectional epidemiological
survey, there was no significant deterioration in inter-examiner
agreement on the assessment of teeth and a significant difference in one of two
comparisons on the assessment of surfaces using the kappa statistic.
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