Incidence of Bitewing and Periapical Radiographic Errors in Dental School of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2012-13

Dental diagnosis may be affected by the occurrence of the errors in the intra-oral radiographic images and the patients’ treatment plan can be problematic in these cases. The repetition of these radiographs increases the risks of radiation exposure for the patients in turn. The present study assessed the incidences of common bitewing and periapical radiographic errors taken by 7 semester dental students at Shahid Beheshti Dental School during 2012 and 2013.
In this cross-sectional descriptive research, 1900 bitewing and periapical images prepared by the 7 semester dental students were collected. Radiographic observations were done and the incidence of five conventional radiographic errors and repetition of the radiographies were determined. The frequency and percentage of common radiographic errors were calculated and results were report with regard to the radiography type, the location and the student gender, and the results were analyzed using the Chi-Square test.
The errors of processing (26.58%), film placement (11.47%), horizontal angle (10.89%); cone-cut (9.05%) and vertical angle (5%) were reported as the most common radiographic errors respectively. The repetition rate of the radiographs was 15%; among them; 43.31 repeated for the error precessing, 36.3% for the error of film placement and 28.5% for the error of cone-cut. The incidence of the common errors in the bitewing radiographies was higher than periapical radiographs.
Processing and film placement errors were found to be the most common radiographic errors taken by the 7 semester dental students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.