Reliability of intra‐oral quantitative sensory testing (QST) in patients with atypical odontalgia and healthy controls – a multicentre study

Abstract

SummaryThe reliability of comprehensive intraoral quantitative sensory testing (QST) protocol has not been examined systematically in patients with chronic orofacial pain. The aim of the present multicenter study was to examine test-retest and inter-examiner reliability of intraoral QST measures in terms of absolute values and z-scores as well as within-session coefficients of variation (CV) values in patients with atypical odontalgia (AO) and healthy pain-free controls. Forty-five AO patients and 68 healthy controls were subjected to bilateral intraoral gingival QST and unilateral extratrigeminal QST (thenar) on three occasions (twice on one day by two different examiners and once approximately one week later by one of the examiners). Intraclass correlation coefficients and kappa values for inter-examiner and test-retest reliability were computed. Most of the standardized intraoral QST measures showed fair to excellent inter-examiner (9-12 of 13 measures) and test-retest (7-11 of 13 measures) reliability. Furthermore, no robust differences in reliability measures or within-session variability (CV) were detected between AO patients and the healthy reference group. These reliability results in chronic orofacial pain patients support earlier suggestions based on data from healthy subjects that intraoral QST is sufficiently reliable for use Correspondence: Dr. Lene Baad-Hansen, Section of Clinical Oral Physiology, Department of Dentistry, HEALTH, Aarhus University, Vennelyst Boulevard 9, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark, lene.hansen@odontologi.au.dk. All authors declare no conflicts of interest. NIH Public Access

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