Economic aspects of the detection of occlusal dentine caries

To evaluate the cost of true-positive occlusal dentine caries detection in permanent molars assessed by: (I) visual-tactile examination, (II) visual-tactile examination combined with bitewing radiographs, and (III) selective radiographic examination of patients with lesions detected clinically. A second aim was to analyse the different strategies when the costs of the subsequent restorative care are considered.

A model analysis was applied owing to the lack of original articles. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated from a systematic review and included in vitro and in vivo studies of medium and high quality. The direct costs for examinations and restorative care were extracted from the costs of the Public Dental Service in Sweden (2006).

The diagnostic costs per true-positive finding were dependent on the occurrence of occlusal caries and increased with decreasing prevalence. The strategy by which radiographs were exposed selectively on the basis of findings from visual-tactile examination resulted in higher initial costs compared with the first and second strategies. When the costs of the subsequent restorative care were added, the selective strategy was most beneficial by up to 26% savings per true-positive diagnosis. However, with this selective strategy, more cases of true-positive dentine caries were assumed would remain undetected as compared with the combined strategy with visual-tactile examination and radiographs for all.

The cost for a true-positive caries diagnosis was inversely related to caries occurrence, and different diagnostic strategies may display contrasting outcomes when subsequent restorative care is taken into account.