Forces exerted by a conventional dental explorer during clinical examination
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Published on: March 7, 2014
J Wagner1, G Thomas, C Stanford
1College of Engineering and College of Dentistry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1527, USA.
Purpose:
To measure the range of forces exerted clinically in order to determine whether research in this area uses forces that are similar to those generally seen in a clinical setting.
Methods:
A transducer was manufactured consisting of a force measurement sleeve positioned over the handle of a conventional explorer. The sleeve housed 4 strain gauges oriented to detect forces in a vertical and lateral direction. Five experienced dentists performed a full-mouth caries exam on three fully dentate caries-free subjects with the force-detecting probe.
Results:
The overall average force was 340 +/- 6 (SEM) g with a standard deviation of 218 g and a range of 14-1,006 g. The average number of contacts per tooth was 6.2 +/- 0.2 (SEM) with a standard deviation of 2.7.
Conclusions:
The data from this study show that the forces used in previous studies were sometimes greater than the average force, but were still within the observed range of forces.
