The Importance of a Detailed Clinical Examination of Carious Lesions

作者：Reidar Fauske Sognnaes · 发表于：Journal of Dental Research · 年份：1940 · DOI：10.1177/00220345400190010201 · 被引用次数：41 · 研究领域：HIV/AIDS oral health manifestations、Oral microbiology and periodontitis research、Dental Health and Care Utilization

For clinical study and treatment of disease it is essential to establish unfailing diagnostic methods and universally accepted definitions of symptoms. As far as dental caries is concerned, the text-books do not associate this disease with any particular diagnostic difficulties. However, Gythfeldt (1) has shown that an examination of the caries frequency in a group of children gave a surprisingly great discrepancy in the findings, when carried out by several examiners, using the same diagnostic procedure. This indicates that certain manifestations of caries are liable to be overlooked, possibly due to a varying conception of early symptoms of the disease. In addition to this source of error it is unfortunate that information regarding the caries frequency in different countries, communities, and smaller groups of individuals is not based on standardized diagnostic methods. Although the statistical evaluation of caries-records has been greatly improved by the modified caries-index worked out by Bodecker (2, 3), an accurate comparison of the results is not possible unless the examinations per se are carried out by comparable diagnostic methods. Thus the questions arise, firstly, to what extent do the clinical findings vary when different diagnostic procedures are employed and, secondly, what type of lesions are most liable to be overlooked.