Caries risk assessment for adult patients by Croatian dentists

Objectives: The objective was to describe the knowledge, opinions and practices of Croatian dental practitioners with respect to caries risk assessment (CRA) through the use of a national questionnaire survey.
Methods: An online questionnaire survey was administrated to a random sample of 1,500 dentists in Croatia via e-mail. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were performed.
Results: The response rate was 17.13%. Of the respondents, 47% reported that CRA was part of their routine practice, but only 4.5% did so using a specific evaluation form. There was a great variation among respondents with respect to the importance given to different factors to be considered for the development of a treatment plan. Moreover 77% of the respondents plan individual caries prevention (ICP) based on the CRA. There was statistically significant association between CRA and ICP, and between CRA and treatment plan (p<0.05, Chi-square test). Dentists performing CRA are more likely to plan ICP and plan treatment according to CRA. The results also showed that dentists’ experience and specialty did not influence the use of CRA (p>0.05).
Conclusions: A substantial percentage of Croatian dentists do not perform CRA, and there is a strong relationship between its use and ICP and therapy plans. There is a need to encourage the use of CRA in daily dental practice in Croatia.