Table 3.

Factors affecting dentists’ decision to surgically intervene into inner enamel lesions according to patients’ age

Variable	Adult patient scenario				Pediatric patient scenario
	OR	95% CI		p value	OR	95% CI		p value
		Lower	Upper			Lower	Upper
Type of practice
Employed by another dentist	1				1
Self-employed without partners and without sharing of income, costs, or office space	0.26	0.11	0.62	0.002	0.38	0.15	0.93	0.034
Percentage of patients who self-pay*	1.04	1.01	1.07	0.021	1.03	1.00	1.07	0.057
Practice busyness, n (%)
Too busy to treat all people requesting appointments	1				1
Provided care to all, but the practice was overburdened	1.37	0.39	4.78	0.620	2.22	0.47	10.44	0.310
Provided care to all, and the practice was not overburdened	3.72	1.05	13.19	0.042	4.35	0.90	20.94	0.067
Not busy enough	1.58	0.38	6.49	0.528	1.92	0.35	10.59	0.452
Using a dental explorer for a primary occlusal caries diagnosis* (reference: no use)	1.64	0.57	4.69	0.360	8.32	1.84	37.71	0.006

CI, confidence interval

C statistic (area under the receiver operating characteristic [ROC] curve) is 0.73 in the adult patient model, and 0.70 in the pediatric patient model.

Statistically significant odds ratios are highlighted in bold italic font.

*Adjusted for gender, years elapsed since graduation from dental school, waiting time for restorative dentistry, city population, patient age distribution, and percentage of patient contact time spent each day doing restorative, aesthetic and extractions procedures, conducting caries risk assessment, and percentage of patients who receive diet counseling in both adult- and pediatric-patient models

^*Continuous variable