Factors affecting interpretation of dental radiographs

Objectives: To identify the factors influencing errors in the interpretation of dental radiographs. Methods: A protocol was registered on Prospero. All studies published until May 2022 were included in this review. The search of the electronic databases spanned Ovid Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science and Scopus. The quality of the studies was assessed using the MMAT tool. Due to the heterogeneity of the included studies, a meta-analysis was not conducted. Results: The search yielded 858 articles, of which eight papers met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and were included in the systematic review. These studies assessed the factors influencing the accuracy of the interpretation of dental radiographs. Six factors were identified as being significant that affected the occurrence of interpretation errors. These include clinical experience, clinical knowledge, and technical ability, case complexity, time pressure, location and duration of dental education and training and cognitive load. Conclusions: The occurrence of interpretation errors has not been widely investigated in dentistry. The factors identified in this review are interlinked. Further studies are needed to better understand the extent of the occurrence of interpretive errors and their impact on the practice of dentistry.