This groundbreaking collaboration between the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Center for Integrated Global Oral Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry is the first and only known Guidelines for Living initiative dedicated to oral health.
“Oral disease is estimated to affect nearly half of the world’s population, and the number of cases is growing faster than the global population,” said Dr. Ashraf Fouad, chair of the ADA’s Council on Scientific Affairs and professor and chair of the Department of Endodontics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry.
“The ADA Guidelines for Living project will provide dentists and other health care professionals with continually updated, evidence-based information to help improve their patients’ oral health.”
The project’s first focus is updating the 2017 ADA Guidelines on the Evaluation of Oral Potential Malignancies and Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma. The first recommendations are expected to be published digitally in the Journal of the American Dental Association and on ADA.org later this year.
Guideline topics are selected and prioritized by an advisory panel comprised of representatives from the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and several other government and professional dental organizations.
“This initiative builds on the ADA’s previous foundational work in guideline development, leveraging artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to continuously and rapidly incorporate scientific findings from the biomedical literature into new and existing guidelines,” said lead investigator Alonso Carrasco-Labra, MD, associate professor and director of the Cochrane Collaborating Center for Oral Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine.
Guidelines contain evidence-based recommendations developed by an independent panel to help patients, oral health care providers, and health care professionals make informed care decisions.
Dynamic guidelines retain the methodological rigor of traditional guidelines but are updated as new evidence emerges and is carefully reviewed. Traditional guidelines are typically updated every 3-5 years, and the advancement of dynamic guidelines allows patients, health care providers, policymakers, and others to be informed 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 Dr. Mark Wolf, dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine.