Journal
CARIES RESEARCH
Volume 34, Issue 2, Pages 103-108Publisher
KARGER
DOI: 10.1159/000016576
Keywords
caries susceptibility; classification of tooth surfaces; survival analysis
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Individual tooth surfaces have vastly different susceptibilities to caries and this susceptibility also varies over time, The aim of this study was to develop a method of grouping tooth surfaces into a caries susceptibility classification based on their survival experience. The data used in the study were from a 3-year caries clinical trial. The definition of survival time was taken to be the time from the start of the trial to when a surface is recorded as decayed or filled. Cluster analysis was used to divide the tooth surfaces into groups in such a way that surfaces in the same group have similar survival time distributions. The 13 groups identified were ordered from 1 to 13 starting with the group with the shortest survival time, i.e. the occlusal surfaces of the four first molars. Approximately 80% of symmetrical pairs of tooth surfaces were in the same group. The groups obtained using cluster analysis were compared to groups defined using dental/anatomical criteria. It is concluded that the cluster analysis method developed for grouping the tooth surfaces cn provide a useful descriptive measure of caries susceptibility which can be applied to data from any longitudinal study of caries. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel.
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