CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 128Dental Health and Care UtilizationReliability and Agreement in MeasurementOral microbiology and periodontitis research

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

Effect of diagnostic threshold on the validity and reliability of epidemiological caries diagnosis using the Dundee Selectable Threshold Method for caries diagnosis (DSTM)

Open access
Fyffe, Hazel E., Deery, Chris, Nugent, Zoann J., Nuttall, Nigel M., Pitts, Nigel B.·2000·Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology
DOI 10.1034/j.1600-0528.2000.280106.x
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Abstract – Objectives: To develop a method for recording dental caries at the D 1 (enamel and dentine) diagnostic threshold (without loss of D 3 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 D 1 (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 D 1 (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. Assessed against a benchmark examiner, there was no significant loss of sensitivity at the D 1 diagnostic threshold compared with the D 3 threshold and, although there was a significant loss of specificity at the D 1 threshold, all specificity values could be considered to be high. Conclusions: Modifying the diagnostic criteria typically used in surveys of caries prevalence (to allow assessment of the levels of enamel caries which could benefit from preventive care as well as dentinal caries requiring restorative care) in adolescents does not adversely affect the reliability or benchmark validity of experienced examiners to a significant degree.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1034/j.1600-0528.2000.280106.x

Cites

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Still being checked.

Research works printed but not linked: 27

  1. [2]2. Palmer JD, Anderson RJ, Downer MC. Guidelines for prevalence studies of dental caries. Community Dent Health 1984;1:55-66.
  2. [6]6. Pitts NB, Fyffe HE. The effect of varying diagnostic thresholds upon clinical caries data for a low prevalence group. J Dent Res 1988;67:592-6.
  3. [7]7. Nuttall NM, Pitts NB. Restorative treatment thresholds reported to be used by dentists in Scotland. Br Dent J 1990;169:119-26.
  4. [8]8. Fyffe HE, Nuttall NM, Pitts NB. Non-restorative man- agement strategies for caries reported to be used by den- tists in Scotland. J Dent Res 1992;71:641.
  5. [9]9. Nuttall NM, Fyffe HE, Pitts NB. Caries management stra- tegies used by a group of Scottish dentists. Br Dent J 1994;176:373-8.
  6. [10]10. Backer Dirks O. Longitudinal dental caries study in chil- dren 9-15 years of age. Arch Oral Biol 1961;6:94-108.
  7. [11]11. Backer Dirks O. At what stage should a carious lesion be recorded? Adv Fluor Res Dent Caries Prev 1964;2:21-3.
  8. [12]12. Backer Dirks O, Van Amerongen J, Winkler KC. A repro- ducible method for caries evaluation. J Dent Res 1951; 30:246-59.
  9. [14]14. Downer MC. The quality of caries data from the national and BASCD surveys. Community Dent Health 1992; 9:107-8.
  10. [15]15. Davies GN, Cadell PB. Four investigations to determine the reliability of caries-recording methods. Arch Oral Biol 1963;8:331-48.
  11. [16]16. Downer MC. Concurrent validity of an epidemiological diagnostic system for caries with the histological appear- ance of extracted teeth as validating criterion. Caries Res 1975;9:231-46.
  12. [17]17. Shaw L, Murray JJ. Inter-examiner and intra-examiner reproducibility in clinical and radiographic diagnosis. Int Dent J 1975;25:280-7.
  13. [18]18. Rugg-Gunn AJ, Downer MC, Ashley FP. Reliability of caries data in three clinical trials. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 1976;4:15-8.
  14. [19]19. Howat AP, Holloway PJ, Brandt RS. The effect of diag- nostic criteria on the sensitivity of dental epidemiological data. Caries Res 1981;15:117-23.
  15. [20]20. Mitropoulos CM, Downer MC. Inter-examiner agree- ment in the diagnosis of dental caries among officers of the Reference Service. Br Dent J 1987;162:227-8.
  16. [22]22. Fyffe HE. Aspects of dental caries in adolescents: dental health needs assessment related to provision of care and patients' dental health state utilities [PhD thesis]. Dun- dee: Univ Dundee; 1996.
  17. [25]25. Deneef P. Evaluating rapid tests for streptococcal phar- yngitis: the apparent accuracy of a diagnostic test when there are errors in the standard of comparison. Med Decis Making 1987;7:92-6.
  18. [26]26. Pitts NB. Safeguarding the quality of epidemiological caries data at a time of changing disease patterns and evolving dental services. Community Dent Health 1992;10:1-9.
  19. [28]28. Landis RJ, Koch GG. The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 1977;33:159- 74.
  20. [29]29. Dowell TB, Holloway PJ, Keshani D, Clerehugh V. Do dentists fill teeth unnecessarily? Br Dent J 1983;155:247- 9.
  21. [30]30. Downer MC. Validation of methods used in dental caries diagnosis. Int Dent J 1989;39:241-6.
  22. [31]31. Pickles TH. The relationship of caries prevalence data and diagnosed treatment needs in a child population. Med Care 1970;8:463-73.
  23. [32]32. Hill FJ. Survey methods for measuring dental treatment needs in secondary school populations [MSc thesis]. Manchester: Univ Manchester; 1974.
  24. [33]33. Nuttall NM. Capability of a national epidemiological survey to predict General Dental Service treatment. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 1983;11:296-301.
  25. [34]34. Spencer AJ. The role of epidemiological surveys in plan- ning dental services: are they a useful tool? Community Dent Health 1985;2:277-83.
  26. [35]35. Nuttall NM, Davies JA. The capability of the 1983 chil- dren's dental health survey in Scotland to predict fillings and extractions subsequently undertaken. Community Dent Health 1988;5:355-62.
  27. [36]36. Bader JD, Shugars DA, Rozier RG. Relationship between epidemiologic coronal caries assessments and practi- tioners' treatment recommendations in adults. Com- munity Dent Oral Epidemiol 1993;21:96-101.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 128

Related

Metadata

Authors
Fyffe, H. E., Deery, C., Nugent, Z. J., Nuttall, N. M., & Pitts, N. B.
Affiliations
Dundee Dental Hospital (GB)
Corresponding author
Fyffe, Hazel E.
ORCID
Venue
Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2000-02
Volume
28
Issue
1
Pages
42-51
ISSN
  • 0301-5661 (ISSN-L)
  • 1600-0528
DOI
10.1034/j.1600-0528.2000.280106.x
OpenAlex
W2094808395
Semantic Scholar
c72a643016139384b3a8c6e530c092fe9529e0e6
Cited by
128
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 9
FWCI
3.17
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor, 703 d)
Locations
  • Community Dentistry And Oral Epidemiology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Discovery Research Portal (University of Dundee) (publishedVersion)
  • Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • University of Dundee
  • Medical Research Council
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Dentistry › General Dentistry › Dental Health and Care Utilization
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Reliability and Agreement in Measurement
  • Health Sciences › Dentistry › Periodontics › Oral microbiology and periodontitis research
Keywords
caries diagnosis, diagnostic thresholds, inter-examiner reliability, diagnostic validity, caries prevalence, enamel caries, dentin caries, adolescents
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Calibration, Dental Caries, DMF Index, Feasibility Studies, Humans, Scotland, Reproducibility of Results, Observer Variation, Prevalence, Benchmarking

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review