ANALYSIS OF VALIDITY FOR DIFFERENT DIAGNOSTIC METHODS OF EARLY PROXIMAL CARIOUS LESIONS

Aim of study was to compare the clinical visual and radiographic diagnostic technique with histological analysis of early proximal carious lesions. Materials and method. Study group included 96 proximal surfaces (48 teeth obtained from dental extractions for orthodontic or periodontal reasons). The proximal surfaces were examined by visual clinical examen and radiographic examen. A histological assessment was performed as gold standard. The sensivity and specificity values were calculated for clinical and radiographic examen. The values were analysed using McNemar test, with significance threshold p 0.05. Results. Significant statistical differences were obtained when comparing both the sensitivity and specificity of the radiological detection method compared to the clinical method (p=0.0001 0.05). The inter-examiner reproducibility regarding the clinical and radiographic examination was 0.983 and 0.814, respectively, both statistically significant. Conclusions. The conventional radiographic method has proven to have a significantly higher validity in detecting incipient proximal carious lesions compared to the clinical method. The inter-examiner reproducibility in the case of the radiographic method has shown a very high level of agreement, higher than in the case of the clinical method. Conventional radiography can be successfully used in diagnosing incipient carious lesions, but always corroborated with data obtained through visual examination.