Reliability of intraoral quantitative sensory testing (QST) in patients with atypical odontalgia and healthy controls : a multicenter study

Reliability of intraoral quantitative sensory testing (QST) in patients with atypical odontalgia and healthy controls – a multicenter study The reliability of a comprehensive intraoral quantitative sensory testing (QST) protocol has not been examined systematically in patients with chronic orofacial pain. Also, the reliability of QST z-scores has not been reported. Aim of Investigation: The aim of the present multi-center 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. Methods: Fourty-five AO patients and 68 healthy controls were subjected to bilateral intraoral gingival QST and unilateral extraoral QST (thenar) on three occasions (twice on one day by two different examiners and once approximately one week later by one of the examiners). Interclass correlation coefficients and kappa values for inter-examiner and test-retest reliability were computed. Results: Most of the standardized intraoral QST measures (absolute values and z-scores) 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. Conclusions: These reliability results in chronic orofacial pain patients support earlier suggestions based on data from healthy subjects that intraoral QST (absolute values as well as z-scores) is sufficiently reliable for use as a part of a comprehensive evaluation of patients with somatosensory disturbances or neuropathic pain in the trigeminal region