The willingness of US pediatric dentists to use Atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) with their patients: a conjoint analysis
Date
2014-03-17
Authors
Kateeb, Elham Talib
Warren, John
Gaeth, Gary
Damiano, Peter
Momany, Elizabeth
Kanellis, Michael J.
Weber-Gasparoni, Karin
Ansley, Timothy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley Online Library
Abstract
Objectives: The atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) was developed as an affordable,
patient-friendly dental caries management procedure that does not need
extensive operator training or special skills. The aim of this study was to determine
factors that influence the decision to use ART using an innovative marketing
research technique known as conjoint analysis.
Methods: A conjoint survey was completed by 723 members of the American
Academy of PediatricDentistry.Three factors (age of the child, level of cooperation,
type of insurance) were varied across three levels to create nine patient scenarios.
The weights that practitioners placed on these factors in decisions to use ART in
treating carious lesions were determined by conjoint analysis. Factors such as lesion
location, depth, and extension were fixed in the nine clinical scenarios.
Results: Seven-hundred twenty-three pediatric dentists completed the survey (32
percent). Age of the child was the most important factor in pediatric dentists’ decisions
to use ART (46 percent) compared with level of cooperation (41 percent) and
type of insurance coverage (11 percent). For the age factor, the age of 2 years had the
greatest utility (0.55) compared with age 4 (−0.09) and age 6 (−0.46). For types of
insurance coverage, having no insurance (0.124) had the greatest utility compared
with having public insurance (−0.119).
Conclusions: Although insurance coverage was the least important among the
factors, being without insurance, being very young, and being uncooperative was
the scenario where pediatric dentists most favored ART when making trade offs
between different factors using the conjoint design.
Description
Keywords
dental atraumatic restorative treatment , decision making , conjoint analysis , pediatric dentistry , access to health care