The Accuracy of Senior Students of Rasht Dental School in Detecting Proximal Caries in Digital Bitewing Radiographs

Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world. Dentists acquire the ability to correctly identify caries through training. In addition to clinical examination, the use of radiographic techniques, especially the bitewing technique, are the main tools for the accurate detection of caries. The present study was conducted to investigate the accuracy of senior students of Rasht Dental School in detecting proximal caries.
In this cross-sectional study, ten standard-quality bitewing radiographs (152 dental surfaces) were selected. The samples were then examined for the presence and depth of interproximal caries by 39 senior students (as observers) and five faculty members as the gold standard. The findings were analyzed using statistics including sensitivity, specificity, Positive Predictive Value (PPV), Negative Predictive Value (NPV), accuracy, and kappa.
The rate of agreement (kappa) between the students and the gold standard in detecting the presence and depth of caries was 0.696 and 0.502, respectively. The students’ reliability in the detection of caries and its depth yielded a kappa coefficient of 0.912 and 0.638, respectively.
The student’s accuracy in detecting caries was significantly good. Nonetheless, they had moderate accuracy in detecting the depth of caries, and they underestimated the depth especially in the case of caries at the DEJ level. The students’ reliability in detecting the presence of caries was almost excellent and their reliability for detecting the depth was significantly good, too.