The Development of Evidence‐Based Guidelines in Dentistry

Abstract

Use of guidelines is an important means of reducing the gap between research and clinical practice. Sound and unbiased information should be available to enable dental professionals to provide better clinical treatment for their patients. The development of clinical guidelines in dentistry should follow standard and transparent methodology. The purpose of this article is to propose important steps for developing evidence-based clinical recommendations in dentistry. Initially, dental guidelines should be extensively sought and assessed to answer focused clinical questions. If there is a paucity of guidelines or if existing guidelines are not of good methodological quality, systematic reviews should be searched or conducted to serve as a basis for the development of evidence-based guidelines. When systematic reviews are produced, they should be rigorous in order to provide the best evidence possible. In the last phase of the process, the overall quality of evidence should be scrutinized and assessed, together with other factors (balance between treatment effects and side effects, patients' values, and cost-effectiveness of therapy) to determine the strength of recommendations. It is expected this approach will result in the development of sound clinical guidelines and consequent improvement of dental treatment. Dr. Faggion is Colgate Senior Lecturer,ABSTRACT Structured summary 2 Provide a structured summary including as applicable: background; objectives; data sources; study eligibility criteria, participants, and interventions; study appraisal and synthesis methods; results; limitations; conclusions and implications of key findings; systematic review registration number.

Community‐based preventive activities in the Public Dental Service in Norway

“…Moreover, the present study showed that only half of the respondents expressed a need for new evidence‐based national guidelines regarding population‐based preventive interventions. Evidence‐based practice guidelines are a new tool to update clinicians in their work and they are developed by multidisciplinary working groups and based on systematic reviews of research . Internationally, an evidence‐based dentistry approach to individual patient care and service planning has been in focus for several years, but the professionals in the present study seemed to be rather self‐confident and did not have a positive attitude towards such an approach.…”

European Fissure Sealant Guidelines: assessment using AGREE II

“…The results of this study indicate that various common clinical dental procedures such as the use of pit and fissure sealants currently do not have too many specifically and free‐access clinical guidelines. This is a cause for concern, because clinical guidelines are supposed to be an important tool for effective evidence‐based dental practice, and consequently, their development should be targeted to a large number of commonly performed procedures .…”

Clinical Guidelines and Implementation into Daily Dental Practice

“…1 High-quality, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines offer a mode of bridging the gap between policy, best practice, local contexts and patient options, 1,2 support effective clinical practice and bring potential benefits to practitioners and patients. 5,6 They get research into practice by providing the link, reducing the gap between evidencebased literature and clinical practice, and providing users with consistent advice and common points of reference for assessing their performance against measurable criteria. 6,7 While CGs are mainly developed to support and assist clinicians and patients, they can also help to improve and monitor patient safety, clinical effectiveness, and quality of care.…”

“…5,6 They get research into practice by providing the link, reducing the gap between evidencebased literature and clinical practice, and providing users with consistent advice and common points of reference for assessing their performance against measurable criteria. 6,7 While CGs are mainly developed to support and assist clinicians and patients, they can also help to improve and monitor patient safety, clinical effectiveness, and quality of care. 8 Improved quality of care, efficiency and cost containment, 9 reduced morbidity and mortality, 10 increased patient knowledge and awareness on treatment about benefits and harm of various treatments, 5,7 are all listed as goals and benefits.…”

“…Usually guidelines are developed by experts through consensus-based decision making. 6,12 They are typically presented as a checklist with completion of key items required to adequately inform end users including clinicians, researchers, and guideline and policy developers. 13,14 These 'recommendations' as some authors refer, are a useful tool to follow in most instances, but are not the absolute truth.…”