Method: Data from retained sealant and presence of carious lesions were obtained through visual clinical examination and from colour photographs of the same sealed teeth after 4-years by two examiners. Kappa-statistics were applied to calculate agreement. Survival rates of retained sealants in occlusal surfaces were estimated, using the traditional (‘completely gone’ versus ‘fully’ and ‘partially retained’ sealants) and the modified categorization (‘completely gone’ sealants, which included pits and fissures systems that had ≥1 pit re-exposed, versus ‘fully retained’ and ‘partially retained’ sealants).
Result: The prevalence of dentine carious lesions was low. The kappa-coefficients for detecting carious lesions, for both assessment methods used by the two examiners were 0.65 (CI:0.56-0.74) and 0.70 (CI:0.62-0.78) and they were 0.71 (CI:0.64-0.79) and 0.80 (CI:0.74-0.87) for assessing sealant retention. Survival rates of retained sealants were not statistically significantly different between the visual clinical examination and the colour photograph methods for both types of categorization.
Conclusion: The colour photograph method is not different from the visual clinical examination in detecting carious lesions but appears to be more sensitive in assessing sealant retention after 4 years.