Efficiency and Reliability of Thermal and Electrical Tests to Evaluate Pulp Status in Primary Teeth with Assessment of Anxiety Levels in Children

Assessing the pulp status plays a vital role in diagnosis and treatment planning in dentistry especially in children, who may not be able to verbalize their dental symptoms. Pulp sensibility test is used as a valuable investigation to evaluate the state of pulp. The aim of this study is to assess the efficiency and reliability of thermal and electrical pulp tests in primary teeth and to rule out the anxiety level involved in each tests. 30 children aged between 6 to 8 years with carious primary molar teeth in need of conservative pulp therapy were included in this study. 3 tests at random were employed on each tooth which includes cold, heat, electrical pulp test. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value were evaluated based on the clinical visual examination on access opening and the accuracy for each test was calculated. The Facial Image Scale (FIS) was used to assess the state of dental anxiety in children due to these pulp sensibility tests. The highest accuracy rate was calculated for EPT (0.814) followed by cold test (0.777) and heat test (0.759). No significant association was found between the accuracy of all the three tests. (P value > 0.05). Cold test is the most reliable test due to its simplicity and ease to perform. (FIS -1.53).