Trial reportJournal of dental research2015
The efficacy of screening for common dental diseases by hygiene-therapists: a diagnostic test accuracy study.
Trial report in Journal of dental research, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Feasibility study: assessing the efficacy and social acceptability of using dental hygienist-therapists as front-line clinicians.British dental journal · 2016Trial
- Prevention first - modelling evidence-based prevention with the dental team for children in England.British dental journal · 2026Article
- Using Role Substitution to Improve Oral Health in Care Homes: A Process Evaluation.Gerodontology · 2026Article
- Comparative molecular profiling of Helicobacter pylori infection and antibiotic genotypic resistance in paired gastric mucosa, gastric juice, and stool samples.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Setting the context for a complex dental intervention of role substitution in care homes: Initial process evaluation findings.Gerodontology · 2024Article
- National and Subnational Trend of Dental Caries of Permanent Teeth in Iran, 1990-2017.International dental journal · 2024Article
- uSing rolE-substitutioN In care homes to improve ORal health (SENIOR): a study protocol.Trials · 2022Article
- The changing face of dental practice: emerging models of team care in Australia.British dental journal · 2020Article
- Teledentistry as a novel pathway to improve dental health in school children: a research protocol for a randomised controlled trial.BMC oral health · 2020Article
- Improving Oral-Systemic Healthcare through the Interoperability of Electronic Medical and Dental Records: An Exploratory Study.Applied clinical informatics · 2019Article
- Comparing the outcomes of gold-standard dental examinations with photographic screening by mid-level dental providers.Clinical oral investigations · 2019Article
- A resource reallocation model for school dental screening: taking advantage of teledentistry in low-risk areas.International dental journal · 2018Article
- General dental practices with and without a dental therapist: a survey of appointment activities and patient satisfaction with their care.British dental journal · 2018Article
- Direct access: how is it working?British dental journal · 2017Article
- Validity and reliability of remote dental screening by different oral health professionals using a store-and-forward telehealth model.British dental journal · 2016Article
- Alternative scenarios: harnessing mid-level providers and evidence-based practice in primary dental care in England through operational research.Human resources for health · 2015Article
- Direct access in the UK: what do dentists really think?British dental journal · 2015Article
- Dental regulation: Burden impacting patients.British dental journal · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Regularly attending adult patients are increasingly asymptomatic and not in need of treatment when attending for their routine dental examinations. As oral health improves further, using the general dental practitioner to undertake the "checkup" on regular "low-risk" patients represents a substantial and potentially unnecessary cost for state-funded systems. Given recent regulatory changes in the United Kingdom, it is now theoretically possible to delegate a range of tasks to hygiene-therapists. This has the potential to release the general dental practitioner's time and increase the capacity to care. The aim of this study is to compare the diagnostic test accuracy of hygiene-therapists when screening for dental caries and periodontal disease in regularly attending asymptomatic adults who attend for their checkup. A visual screen by hygiene-therapists acted as the index test, and the general dental practitioner acted as the reference standard. Consenting asymptomatic adult patients, who were regularly attending patients at 10 practices across the Northwest of England, entered the study. Both sets of clinicians made an assessment of dental caries and periodontal disease. The primary outcomes measured were the sensitivity and specificity values for dental caries and periodontal disease. In total, 1899 patients were screened. The summary point for sensitivity of dental care professionals when screening for caries and periodontal disease was 0.81 (95% CI, 0.74 to 0.87) and 0.89 (0.86 to 0.92), respectively. The summary point for specificity of dental care professionals when screening for caries and periodontal disease was 0.87 (0.78 to 0.92) and 0.75 (0.66 to 0.82), respectively. The results suggest that hygiene-therapists could be used to screen for dental caries and periodontal disease. This has important ramifications for service design in public-funded health systems.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.