Caries pattern identification in primary dentition: a comparison of clinician assignment and clinical analysis groupings.

The purpose of this study was to compare the assessment of caries patterns by clinical definition and by cluster analysis. One of five etiology-oriented caries patterns was assigned to Head Start children in primary dentition. Cluster analysis grouped children based on carious tooth surfaces for each child. One hundred twenty-seven of the 155 children with at least one carious lesion fell into clusters of at least four children. At least two-thirds of the subjects in each cluster were assigned to a single caries pattern. The largest cluster of 70 children had 66 of its subjects assigned to the pit and fissure pattern. The second largest cluster of 26 children had 20 of its subjects assigned to the faciolingual pattern (intended to identify bottle caries). This study is interpreted to reinforce the notion that caries in the primary dentition occurs in fairly distinct patterns.