Hey everyone, I'm Prateek, a dentist and specialty doctor. In this video, we're going to be looking
at some key dental guidelines to help inform your clinical decision making. If you want to see more
educational videos and tips regarding applications then please make sure you subscribe to the channel.
Now this video is going to cover some of the key dental guidelines that should help inform
your decision making. It's important to note that this isn't a comprehensive video - it doesn't cover
all the guidelines that are out there. However, it covers some of the important ones that are
useful to know particularly when it comes to exams but also when it eventually comes
to working in practice so you can make the best decisions for your patients. One of the big banks
of guidelines which will help you in a lot of decision making are the Scottish Dental Clinical
Effectiveness Programme guidelines. A huge number of dentists use these guidelines as there's such
a range available. There are guidelines available on anticoagulant/antiplatelet management of patients,
bisphosphonate management, antibiotic prophylaxis and even drug prescribing. And the added benefit
with these guidelines are their very clear summary tables and you can also get them on
your mobile device so it makes it very easy chair side to access these guides and actually use them
for the patient whilst they're there. Very commonly we will come across patients who are
on particularly anti-platelets or anticoagulants and the SDCEP guidelines provide you with very
clear instructions of what you should or shouldn't do and how to manage these patients so it makes
management much easier. Next we have the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or NICE,
guidelines and in terms of dentistry there are two key guidelines that we use from here. The first one
is the recall guidelines so this looks at how frequently we should be recalling patients
in terms of their risk factors. So whether it's 3 months, 6 months ,12 months etc and the second
important guideline that they provide are the wisdom teeth extraction guidelines.
So this looks at when it is appropriate to be extracting a wisdom tooth so, for example, whether
it's pericoronitis, whether it's caries, those factors so we can use these guidelines to help
inform referrals for wisdom teeth. We then have the Faculty of General Dental Practitioners, or FGDP,
and they provide some important guidelines that you will I'm sure have come across particularly
through dental school. So the first one is the radiography selection criteria and grading. So this
looks at which radiographs we should use for which particular cases and also how to grade radiographs
and this was recently updated in terms of how we grade radiographs, so I suggest you check this out
in order to see the latest methods. They also provide guidelines on recordkeeping -
what we need to have in our records or what we should have in our records. And also some advice
on antibiotic prescribing within dentistry. Now when we look at prevention and dentistry
the biggest toolkit that we've got is the Delivering Better Oral Health toolkit. This
is a comprehensive evidence-based toolkit for prevention for patients of all ages and this is
a document that I have within my surgery and it takes you through caries management of patients
at various ages - what we should do in terms of oral cancer management all of these factors. We've
got obvious guidelines that we should follow in terms of how frequently should see them,
what fluoride prescriptions we should give, all these key factors. Particularly in dental
school, a lot of finals patients you want to ensure you're following the Delivering Better Oral Health
toolkit when it comes to the prevention part. Another big one which you may not have to use very
often but it's very, very useful to have are the Dental Trauma Guidelines. Particularly in practice,
you might have an emergency patient booked in where a child may have fallen and chipped a
tooth and so these guidelines again provide you very clear instructions on what you should do
in particular cases of trauma so whether it's avulsion, whether it's a luxation, whether it's an
enamel-dentine fracture. Whatever it may be, you have information on what the trauma is, how we
go about diagnosing it, what investigations we may need to do, how we manage it which is the important
thing but also how frequently we then need to review the patient. So by looking at this guideline
we very easily can avoid getting confused in terms of management. I know that previously when
I've seen patients with trauma, I've just double checked these guidelines even if they're in the
surgery at the same time just to make sure I've not missed anything because there are quite a
few small things that you may miss but if you look at the guidelines you've got the information there.
Next we have the British Society of Periodontology. For those of you who have been keeping up to date,
we now have a new classification in terms of periodontal diseases - so the BSP provide
you with key documents looking at how to manage various patients depending upon the periodontal
disease that they present with. Additionally, they have other documents like The Good Practitioner's
Guide which again provides you with detailed information on how to manage various patients
in terms of their periodontal health. In terms of root canal treatments and endodontic work,
we have the European Society of Endodontology's key document which is the quality guidelines for
endodontic treatment. This is really important when we look at the results of the endodontic treatment
we're carrying out. For example, when we discuss how far obturation is from working length then
these are the types of guidelines that we need to be looking at. And finally another key area is the
Royal College of Surgeons who provide two other important guidelines for us. The first one is
management of ectopic canines - so whether we refer, whether we extract, whether we monitor, what imaging
to do - all of these factors. And finally they have guidelines on management of first permanent molars.
So if we're considering extracting first permanent molars when is the right time, what should we do.
All of these guidelines and documents that i've mentioned are extremely important and they're
very, very useful to know when it comes to any exams. They hold key information for decision
making and to inform your decision making and they also give you something to fall back on.
However, it's important to note that these are guidelines - they're not rules. They're there to help
you and to try and inform your decision making. So you could deviate from them if you wanted to,
however, if your decision making deviates from the guidelines and you get into problems it may become
difficult to justify why you've deviated from the guidelines that are there and are available so. My
recommendation in this video is the Perio School that's been set up by Reena Wadia. Perio
School is really, really helpful for any dentist and also hygienists who want to further their
knowledge in terms of periodontal disease and management of these patients. I'll put the links
in the description so make sure you check them out. I hope you found this video useful - it was
a bit of a whistle-stop tour of some important guidelines and documents in dentistry. If there
are any others that you think would be useful, let me know and I'll include them in another video.
Please make sure to like, comment and subscribe and if you do have any other suggestions please
make sure to contact me on the various social media handles. Until the next video - take care!