ABSTRACT
Abstract This study aimed to make a longitudinal analysis of interexaminer calibration reproducibility in diagnosing dental caries in posterior teeth, by examiners without previous experience in epidemiological studies. A group of 11 inexperienced examiners underwent theoretical-practical training and calibration assessments, assisted by a standard examiner. An examiner who did not participate directly in the research selected 5-year-old children with and without caries. The D3 diagnostic threshold was used to evaluate dental caries, based on the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria. The initial calibration (baseline) was performed after the theoretical-practical training session, and consisted of examining 20 children; the second calibration occurred three months later, and involved evaluating another 18 children. The interexaminer agreement was obtained by kappa statistics, and by overall percentage agreement. The paired t-test was applied to compare the values for kappa means and overall percentage agreement between the time points studied. At baseline, the values for kappa (> 0.81) and overall percentage agreement (> 95.63%) were considered high. At the 3-month calibration assessment, all the examiners showed some decrease in both kappa (p < 0.0001) and overall percentage agreement (p = 0.0102). The calibration process currently proposed by the WHO is effective. However, reproducibility was not maintained over time for inexperienced examiners evaluating the posterior teeth of 5-year-old children, under epidemiological conditions.
ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the difference in the on-line searches for terms related to hand hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic in developed and middle-income countries. Material and Methods: The cross-sectional study analyzed the digital data through the Google Trends website to obtain the variation of the relative search volume (RSV) through the terms "alcohol gel" and "handwashing." According to socio-economic development, the countries were divided into two groups: countries from different continents and hemispheres, with more than 15 million inhabitants, with more than 50% of the population with access to the Internet network and over 1,000 confirmed cases of infected with COVID-19. The paired t-test was applied to compare the means. The significance value adopted was p<0.010. Results: The searches related to the term "hand washing" were more significant when compared to the term "alcohol gel," and the term "alcohol gel" presented a higher average volume of research in developed countries (p<0.010). The developed countries had a higher average relative volume of research than middle-income countries (p<0.010). Developed countries sought more for the term "alcohol gel," and the term "hand washing" showed no difference in the volume of research about the country's socio-economic aspect. Conclusion: Developed countries have a higher volume of search for hand hygiene terms. The middle-income countries must create proposals for raising awareness outside the on-line environment so that this information reaches the entire population during the pandemic.