Decision making in dentistry. Part I: A historical and methodological overview.

The study of clinical decision making provides a common model on which to base dental practice and thus promotes standardization of care and treatment. Decision analysis can assist in identifying missing data in clinical problems and thus generate clinically relevant research agendas. In Part I of this article several of the leading methods of decision analysis are briefly described with examples of how they can be applied in dentistry. The methods presented are Bayes' theorem, decision-tree design, receiver-operating-characteristic curves, sensitivity analysis, and utilities assessment.