Int J Paediatr Dent. 2023 Apr 11. doi: 10.1111/ipd.13072. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Early childhood caries (ECC) requires systematically collected and standardized data.
AIM: To describe a novel multilevel calibration procedure in primary dentition.
DESIGN: Calibration method involved two calibration levels: the first (L1 ) involved inter-examiner agreement between three main investigators, the group leaders (GLs) in the following level; the second level (L2 ) involved three groups of 11 pediatric dentists and inter-examiner agreement assessment according to the GLs in each group. The study sample consisted of 650 primary teeth surfaces in eight children (mean age 6.56±2.22 years). Surface-by-surface percent agreement, tooth-by-tooth percentage agreement, Cohen’s kappa and Fleiss Kappa statistics were used to calculate inter-examiner reliability. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 27.0.
RESULTS: Surface-by-surface agreement regarding ICDASepi -merged revealed almost perfect agreement (>90.00%) both on L1 and L2 . Kappa values and ranges showed good agreement both at L1 (Overall Kappa=0.95) and L2 (Overall Kappa=0.98) and almost perfect consistency was detected between GLs at L1 (>91.30%) and substantial agreement at L2 (>85.00%). All examiner at L2 showed almost perfect positive agreement (sensitivity=96.77-100%) when detecting presence of dental plaque.
CONCLUSIONS: The calibration procedure appeared feasible prior to organizing multicenter epidemiological oral health survey in large population groups of preschool children, with higher number of examiners.
PMID:37038983 | DOI:10.1111/ipd.13072
