Methods: The study population consisted of 109 adults who had gone both screening and full examinations. All examination in both sites were done by more than 30 dental students, all under supervision of the same instructor. Sensitivity, specificity and predictive values were assessed at the tooth level, using the full examination as a "golden standard".
Results: Decisions for 539 teeth were compared. In 265 cases there was agreement that the tooth needed treatment, and for another 169 teeth – agreement was that there are only stained fissures and no treatment is needed. On the other hand - 38 teeth which were categorized during screening as carious – were actually sound and left for follow-up, while 42 teeth that were screened as sound and healthy – were found to need caries related treatments; out of these – 37 had proximal lesions revealed only by radiographs. According to these findings, sensitivity was 80% , specificity was 82%, and positive and negative predictive values were 87% and 72%, respectively.
Conclusion: The reliability of the screening examinations was very high among this community, possibly due to its unique nature, having very low dental experience and almost no existing fillings which may "hide" secondary lesions. This study has few limitations which will be discussed.