There are few studies on practice variation within dentistry. This contrasts with medicine where numerous studies exist. A major finding from the field of medicine is that the size of the physician-specific effects depends on the degree of uncertainty in diagnosis. The physician-specific effects are small for diseases where the diagnostic criteria are unambiguous. Conversely, the effects are large for diseases where the diagnostic criteria are less unambiguous.To assess the size of provider-specific variation in the diagnosis of caries among children and adolescents in Norway and to determine whether this variation depends on uncertainty in diagnosis.Data on caries diagnosis for 709 611 children and adolescents aged 6-18 years were analysed using multilevel regression. Level-1 was patients and level-2 was public dental officers and dental hygienists. Caries was measured according to the following localization of the lesion: in the outer half of the enamel, in the inner half of the enamel, in the outer third of the dentine, in the middle and inner third of the dentine, to the pulp. The degree of uncertainty in diagnosis is expected to be least the deeper into the dentine the lesion goes. Our sample included 87.5

作者：Andreas, Dobloug；Jostein, Grytten；Dorthe, Holst

来源：Community dentistry and oral epidemiology 2014 年 42卷 2期