Student and faculty perceptions in the assessment of amalgam restorations

The purpose of this in-vitro study was to compare the assessment of amalgam restorations made by dental students and faculty members. Extracted human teeth which contained old amalgam restorations were mounted in dental stone and labeled one through 25. All evaluators were instructed the restorations were those of a 35-year-old patient with no clinical symptoms. The restorations were examined by 57 dental students and 10 dental instructors. Each examiner was asked to accept the restorations or replace the restorations with accompanying reason(s). Approximately one year after the first assessment, the blocks were randomly relabeled and all examiners reevaluated the amalgam restorations. the mean number of replacements, reasons for replacement, and kappa values were calculated for this study. A total of 1,675 decisions to replace or not to replace were obtained. There were a total of 2,784 reasons for replacement made by the students and 410 total decisions made by the dental faculty at the initial and final assessments. The study showed that dental faculty were more conservative in their treatment decisions. Also, the intraexaminer scores (kappa values) showed lower reproducibility among the dental students.