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Reliability of probing depth assessments at healthy implant sites and natural teeth

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Abstract

Aim

To evaluate the intra- and inter-examiner reliability in the assessment of probing depth (PD) measurements at healthy dental implant sites and periodontally healthy natural teeth.

Materials and methods

Five patients exhibiting 21 dental implants were enrolled in the study. Eight experienced examiners performed duplicate PD measurements at six sites of all implants and of preselected natural teeth. Intra-examiner accuracy was estimated using intra-examiner correlation coefficients (ICCs) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). A gold standard (GS) examiner was set. Inter-examiner accuracy compared to the GS examiner was assessed using pairwise inter-examiner ICCs.

Results

The intra-examiner ICC ranged from 0.759 (95% CI, 0.692–0.812) to 0.863 (95% CI, 0.826–0.892) for the measurements at teeth and from 0.712 (95% CI, 0.580–0.800) to 0.841 (95% CI, 0.774–0.888) for the PDs assessed at implants. The inter-examiner ICCs for tooth measurements varied from 0.197 (95% CI, − 0.280 to 0.511) to 0.791 (95% CI, 0.560–0.892). The corresponding values for the assessments at implants varied from 0.576 (95% CI, 0.286–0.734) to 0.794 (95% CI, 0.708–0.855).

Conclusions

The intra- and inter-examiner reproducibility of repeated PD measurements assessed by experienced examiners tended to be higher for the measurements at periodontally healthy teeth compared to healthy dental implant sites.

Clinical relevance

Experienced examiners demonstrated a higher degree of reliability of probing measurements around teeth compared to dental implants.

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Funding

This work was realized within the research project “PeriPLas” funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (grant numbers: 13N14478, 13N14479, and 13N14480).

Author information

Author notes

  1. A. Ramanauskaite and K. Obreja equally contributed to this study.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Oral Surgery and Implantology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Carolinum, Frankfurt, Germany

    Ausra Ramanauskaite, Karina Obreja & Frank Schwarz

  2. Department of Periodontology, Operative and Preventive Dentistry, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Karin Jepsen, Raluca Cosgarea, Jennifer Bunke & Søren Jepsen

  3. Department of Periodontology and Peri-Implant Diseases, Philipps University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Raluca Cosgarea

  4. Department of Prosthodontics, Iuliu Hatieganu University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Raluca Cosgarea

  5. Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Christian-Albrechts University Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Anne-Katrin Eisenbeiss, Juliane Schulz & Christian Flörke

  6. Sirona Dental Systems GmbH, Bensheim, Germany

    Christian Eberhard

  7. Department of Restorative Dentistry, Periodontology, Endodontology, and Preventive and Pediatric Dentistry, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    Thomas Kocher, Lukasz Jablonowski & Birte Holtfreter

Authors
  1. Ausra Ramanauskaite
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  2. Karina Obreja
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Contributions

A.R: data analysis, original draft preparation, writing, review, and editing; K.O: conceptualization and original draft preparation; F.S: conceptualization, methodology, resources, writing, review, and editing; K.J: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing, review, editing, and supervision; R.C: investigation; J.B: investigation; A.K.E: investigation; J.S: investigation; C.F: investigation; C.E: project administration; T.K: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing, review, editing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition; L.J: conceptualization, methodology, investigation; S.J: methodology, writing, review, and editing; B.H: conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, data analysis, data curation, writing, review, editing, supervision, visualization, and project administration.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frank Schwarz.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The protocol has been approved by the Ethics Committee of Universitätsklinikum Bonn (102/21-MPG).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 29 KB) STARD Checklist

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 An examination plan for practical probing depth (PD) measurements at natural teeth
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Table 4 Distribution of probing depth values (PD) measured at natural teeth and dental implants at first and second examinations by an examiner, and distribution of absolute differences of repeatedly measured probing depth values
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Table 5 Distribution of absolute differences in probing depth (PD) measurements taken at natural teeth and dental implants between each examiner and the gold standard (GS) by examination time (1 and 2)
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Table 6 Intra-examiner correlation coefficients (absolute agreement and a single rater unit) for repeated probing depth (PD) measurements at natural teeth and healthy dental implants
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Table 7 Inter-examiner correlation coefficients (absolute agreement and a single rater unit) for probing depth (PD) measurements at first (E1) and second (E2) examinations at natural teeth and dental implants
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Table 8 Differences in absolute deviations of probing depth (PD) measurements taken at natural teeth and dental implants between examiners from F center (F1 and F2) and the remaining examiners
Full size table

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Ramanauskaite, A., Obreja, K., Schwarz, F. et al. Reliability of probing depth assessments at healthy implant sites and natural teeth. Clin Oral Invest 27, 2533–2545 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00784-022-04810-5

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