DENTHYG 3400

Evidence-Based Medicine:

"Evidence based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.  The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research."

Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. A., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ : British Medical Journal, 312(7023), 71–72.

ADA Definition of Evidence-Based Dentistry:

“an approach to oral healthcare that requires the judicious integration of systematic assessments of clinically relevant scientific evidence, relating to the patient’s oral and medical condition and history, with the dentist’s clinical expertise and the patient’s treatment needs and preferences.”

American Dental Association. (2017). About EBD.  Retrieved from http://ebd.ada.org/en/about

• Publication types are ranked in evidence pyramids based on the rigor of evidence provided by the research design.  The higher the study design is on the pyramid, the higher the level of evidence.  However, this also means there are fewer documents of this type.

• When searching for evidence, be sure to consider what type(s) of publication will have the information you are looking for, as well as where that publication or study type falls within this pyramid. 

• You want to aim for as high a level of evidence as you can.  However, not every topic will have a systematic review available, so you will then need to work your way down.