Dental patient-reported outcome measures are essential for evidence-based prosthetic dentistry

This article will briefly review patient populations and interventions applied in prosthetic dentistry and more extensively review outcomes used for evidence-based prosthetic dentistry.Dental patient populations in prosthetic dentistry usually suffer from extensive loss of tooth substance and/or tooth loss. Typical interventions in prosthetic dentistry are replacement of a substantial amount of tooth structure and lost teeth by conventional or implant-supported fixed or removable dental protheses. Sufficient controls or comparisons should also involve no treatment for tooth loss as a legitimate option. While for many years, prosthodontic treatment almost solely focused on disease-oriented outcomes such as numerical replacement of missing teeth to restore current oral health and prevent further deterioration, dental patient-reported outcomes (dPROs), the outcomes that are directly reported by the patient, are gaining increasing attention. dPROs are what matters most for the patient and dPRO measures have several advantages when applied in clinical practice and research settings compared to traditional disease-oriented measures such as ease applicability and less burdensome for the clinicians.In evidence-based prosthetic dentistry there should be a shift to fewer applied dPRO measures with only one instrument becoming standard. Furthermore, dPROs will probably also become tools to assess patients’ oral health status in clinical practice in a standardized manner. Finally, info...

Source: Journal of Evidence Based Dental Practice - January 17, 2019 Category: Dentistry Source Type: research