Bulletin of Dental Education Article

Oral health care providers and patients will soon receive more frequent, evidence-informed recommendations to advance oral and overall health with the establishment of the ADA Living Guideline Program.

This pioneering collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine (Penn Dental Medicine) and the American Dental Association (ADA) is the first and only known living guideline program dedicated to oral health.

“Oral disease is estimated to affect almost half the world’s population, and the number of cases is growing faster than the population worldwide,” said Ashraf Fouad, D.D.S., M.S., Professor and Chair of the Department of Endodontics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry and Chair of the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs. “The ADA Living Guidelines Program will provide dentists and other health care professionals continually updated, evidence-based information to help improve the oral health of their patients.”

Its first focus will be an update of a 2017 ADA guideline on the evaluation of potentially malignant disorders and oral squamous cell carcinoma in the oral cavity. The first recommendation is expected to publish digitally later this year in The Journal of the American Dental Association and on ADA.org.

Guideline topics are selected and prioritized by an advisory group composed of representatives from the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and several other governmental and professional dental organizations.

“This initiative builds upon previous foundational work on guideline development at the American Dental Association and leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies to enable continuous and rapid incorporation of scientific findings from the biomedical literature into new and existing guidelines,” said Principal Investigator Alonso Carrasco-Labra, D.D.S., M.Sc., Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Cochrane Oral Health Collaborating Center at Penn Dental Medicine.

Guidelines contain evidence-informed recommendations formulated by independent panels designed to assist patients, oral health providers and health care professionals as a resource when making informed care decisions.

Living guidelines uphold the methodological rigor of traditional guidelines but are updated as soon as new evidence emerges and is carefully reviewed. This enhancement of the traditional guideline process, which usually updates every three to five years, allows patients, the profession, policymakers and others to adopt the information more quickly.

“We are proud to bring this important service to our profession and look forward to improving the oral health of millions of patients through these guidelines,” said Mark Wolff, D.D.S., Ph.D., Morton Amsterdam Dean of Penn Dental Medicine.

Contact: mediarelations@ada.org

Courtesy of University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine