Evaluation of Efficacy of Three Different Commercially Available Kit for Chairside Cariogenic Bacteria Test - Caries Risk Test, Saliva-check Mutans and CariScreen

Background and objectives The presence of mutans streptococci has been used in individual assessments of caries risk. In the modern era of dentistry, the chair side kits for assessing chair side cariogenic bacteria play a significant role. There is paucity of literature about the comparison of commercially available chair side caries risk tests. Hence this study was conducted to compare the efficacy of three commercially available chair side cariogenic bacteria tests. Methodology Twenty-five patients in the age group of 5-14 years were selected. The saliva samples of patients were collected and were taken for cariogenic bacteria tests using caries risk test (CRT) bacteria test kit and saliva check mutans kit (mutans rapid detection kit). The plaque samples were taken for CariScreen caries susceptibility testing meter. All the samples were compared with a gold standard, i.e., mitis salivarius-bacitracin (MSB) agar plate test. Results Results demonstrated that the specificity of CariScreen and caries risk test was 91.67 whereas it was 75.00 for saliva check mutans. The CariScreen produced the risk status of the patient in shortest time. However, all the chair side kits failed to show the exact colony count of bacteria. Conclusion The result of the current study proved that both CariScreen and caries risk test are highly efficient in assessing the caries risk of patients. However, the CariScreen is easy to perform and provides the result in shorter time.