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Reliability of intra‐oral quantitative sensory testing ( QST ) in patients with atypical odontalgia and healthy controls – a multicentre study
Author(s) -
BaadHansen L.,
Pigg M.,
Yang G.,
List T.,
Svensson P.,
Drangsholt M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of oral rehabilitation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.991
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1365-2842
pISSN - 0305-182X
DOI - 10.1111/joor.12245
Subject(s) - quantitative sensory testing , medicine , orofacial pain , reliability (semiconductor) , kappa , physical therapy , facial pain , somatosensory system , neuropathic pain , audiology , oral medicine , physical medicine and rehabilitation , anesthesia , sensory system , psychology , dentistry , surgery , power (physics) , linguistics , physics , philosophy , quantum mechanics , psychiatry , cognitive psychology
Summary The reliability of comprehensive intra‐oral quantitative sensory testing ( QST ) protocol has not been examined systematically in patients with chronic oro‐facial pain. The aim of the present multicentre study was to examine test–retest and interexaminer reliability of intra‐oral 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 patients with AO and 68 healthy controls were subjected to bilateral intra‐oral gingival QST and unilateral extratrigeminal QST (thenar) on three occasions (twice on 1 day by two different examiners and once approximately 1 week later by one of the examiners). Intra‐class correlation coefficients and kappa values for interexaminer and test–retest reliability were computed. Most of the standardised intra‐oral QST measures showed fair to excellent interexaminer (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 patients with AO and the healthy reference group. These reliability results in chronic orofacial pain patients support earlier suggestions based on data from healthy subjects that intra‐oral QST is sufficiently reliable for use as a part of a comprehensive evaluation of patients with somatosensory disturbances or neuropathic pain in the trigeminal region.