Journal of dental education
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The clinical findings that dentists use to estimate the future caries activity of patients are imperfect. Almost invariably there are protective factors in patients who go on to develop clinical caries and there are risk factors that persist in patients who do not develop clinical caries. Therefore, the clinical decision process is characterized by a level of uncertainty concerning the selection of patient management strategies for caries. ⋯ We need to have a better understanding of how clinicians process clinically available risk information. We need to determine what additional risk assessment information will improve the clinician's ability to identify high-risk patients. We also need to establish whether there are differences in the usefulness of additional risk information depending on the level of experience of the clinician.