Interexaminer agreement in the measurement of periodontal disease

Abstract

Six variables of periodontal pathology were independently measured by two periodontists in a study of healthy male adult participants from the VA Dental Longitudinal Study. Two examination sets containing a total of 50 volunteers were compared to establish interexaminer agreement. Measures of gingival recession, tooth mobility, calculus accumulation, and plaque accumulation exhibited high interexaminer correlation. The measures of periodontal pocket depth and gingival health also showed good levels of agreement, but reflected the examination order; the second examiner consistently scored more severe disease because of the invasive nature of these measures. Establishment of the reproducibility of periodontal pathology measurements is essential for studies which involve more than one examiner. This investigation demonstrated a high confidence level of reproducibility for the six measures utilized and showed that recalibration enhanced the initial training procedure and increased examiner agreement above the initial level.

Changes in Body Weight and Adiposity Predict Periodontitis Progression in Men

“…During the entire follow-up, three calibrated periodontists serially served as examiners (see Appendix 1). Interexaminer agreement of PPD was 41% and kappa was 0.26, based on repeat assessments on 25 participants (Feldman et al, 1982(Feldman et al, , 1985Fleiss and Chilton, 1983;Alman et al, 1986). After participants rinsed with a disclosing solution, presence or absence of supragingival plaque was determined on 4 sites (Feldman et al, 1986), and the worst site was recorded.…”

Age-Dependent Associations Between Chronic Periodontitis/Edentulism and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease

“…More detailed descriptions of the periodontal measures used in the DLS and their reproducibility have been published previously. 17,18 Briefly, weighted -values for interexaminer reproducibility of probing depth and bone loss scores indicated good reproducibility (Ͼ0.4) 19 based on repeat assessments on 24 and 25 subjects, respectively.…”

Comparison of health behaviour and oral/medical conditions in non‐insulin‐dependent (type II) diabetics and non‐diabetics

“…The periodontal examination utilized six selected teeth (17,21,24, 37, 41, 44) suggested by Lilienthal et al 27 A standardized probe ‡ was used for measuring the probing pocket depth (PPD) of six surfaces (mesiobuccal, midbuccal, distobuccal, mesiolingual, m i d buccal, and distolingual) of each tooth. In addition, tooth mobility (TM) of the six index teeth was recorded according to a modification of criteria used by Feldman et al 28 in that each was scored from 0 to 3. Observation of a slight but essentially nonpathologic mobility with a total buccal and lingual deflection of less than 0.5 mm was scored as 0.…”