Mehwash Kashif, Tahera Ayub, Navid Rashid Qureshi.
Preoperative Accuracy of Dental Panoramic Tomography (dpt) in Determing the Root Curvature of Mandibular Third Molar Tooth.
J Pak Dent Assoc Jan ;21(4):235-41.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was, “To assess the preoperative accuracy of dental panoramic tomography (DPT) in determining the root curvature of mandibular third molar tooth using post surgical findings as gold standard.” METHODOLOGY Patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria were examined by the researcher. After complete history and examination, DPT’s of total one hundred and three cases(n=103) were assessed preoperatively. The researcher traced the outline of the root morphology of mandibular third molar tooth on cephalomatric tracing sheet followed by the extraction of tooth under general or local anaesthesia and postsurgical findings for root curvature were compared with presurgical assessment. Data was entered and analyzed by using SPSS version 10-0. Qualitative variables such as frequency distribution of gender, mean, standard deviation and standard error of mean of age was also determined. In this study, the accuracy of DPT in determining the root(s) curvature of mandibular third molar tooth after comparing with post surgical findings was assessed by using tests of validity i.e. sensitivity and specificity, positive predictive value (PPV)and negative predictive value(NPV) . RESULTS The mean age was calculated as 28.11 years (SD+3.99 & SEM0.39). ? The frequency distribution for male and female patients was calculated as 47. 6% (n=49) and 52.4 %(n=54) respectively. The overall sensitivity and specificity were calculated as 30.16% and 92.5% respectively. The PPV and NPV was 86.3% and 45.68% respectively. The total number of root curvatures found on DPT was 22 (TP+FP= 19+03=22) and those found after surgery was 63 (TP+FN= 19+44= 63) respectively. CONCLUSION In the light of above study it was concluded that the accuracy of DPT in determining the root curvature of Mandibular third molar tooth was low. The surgeons and GDPs must keep in mind the limitation and possibility of bias while prescribing DPT as a preoperative radiological investigation while planning for the mandibular third molar extractions.

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