Prosthodontic decision making among general dentists in Sweden. I: The choice between crown therapy and filling.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to analyze dentists' evaluations of factors related to the choice between crown therapy and filling and to possibly explain this by social and demographic attributes, job situation, and dentists' attitudes.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 2,059 Swedish dentists. The response rate was 76%. In the questionnaire the choice between crown therapy and filling in a clinical situation was presented. The dentists were asked to mark their assessments of the relative importance of the different items on 14-item visual analogue scales (VAS). Multiple regressions were run for all 14 items.

RESULTS

Large individual variations were seen among the dentists regarding the stated importance of the various items. The items rated as the most important were "patient's wish" and "treatment prognosis," and the items rated as least important were "treatment time required" and "number of visits required for treatment." The differences between groups were small, and for no item exceeded 0.7 step on the 8-grade VAS scale. No data reduction was possible using principal components analysis.

CONCLUSION

The study showed great variations among individual dentists. The dentist-related factors explained little of the variance. The results indicated that the questionnaire instrument did not fully capture the real influences on the treatment choice between a filling and an artificial crown.