Objective: This study investigated the use of clinical dental auxiliaries as examiners in caries prevalence surveys of 5- and 12-year-old children in the United Kingdom.
Methods: A random sample of four therapists and four hygienists was drawn from 23 clinical dental auxiliaries employed in the Community Dental Service in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Training and calibration were carried out according to national guidelines for caries prevalence surveys. Sixteen 5-year-old and sixteen 12-year-old children were examined in the calibration exercise. Agreement was assessed using 95% confidence intervals of mean dmft/DMFT of the group, sensitivity and specificity values, and kappa statistics on dft/DFT.
Results: For 5-year-old children, a good level of agreement with the standard examiner was achieved with sensitivity scores ranging from 0.84-0.98, specificity scores from 0.93-0.97, and kappa scores from 0.80-0.89. For 12-year-old children, sensitivity scores ranged from 0.56-0.95; specificity scores from 0.93-0.99; and kappa scores from 0.66-0.83. Four examiners failed to achieve the minimum scores on all measurements.
Conclusion: It was concluded that clinical dental auxiliaries could be used as examiners in caries prevalence surveys of 5-year-old children. However, in order to attempt to meet the national standard for agreement in surveys of 12-year-old children, four of the eight examiners in the present study would require further training. Possible reasons for this difference are discussed.