Model of Evidence-Based Dental Decision Making

Shared decision making empowers patients as informed consumers, helping them to make clinical decisions that optimize their personal oral health. Evidence-based dentistry supports this process by providing best evidence that, when presented in visual and interactive formats, focuses consultation time on treatment or therapy options and their trade-offs. Currently, an explosion of evidence and technological advancements have necessitated a cooperation that translates into an interdisciplinary approach to care delivery. For evidence-based dentistry, this interdisciplinary approach includes the interaction of researchers, clinicians, and patients in promoting individual patient care. To facilitate this interaction, a computerized model of evidence-based dental decision making is presented to manage knowledge in its application to clinical practice. This model includes the use of decision aids and a decision tree composed of multiple clinical practice guidelines. These aids allow for quantifying treatment options in terms of estimates using probability, utility, and cost data. With these estimates, decision analysis and the flexibility to manipulate data provide patients with increased control and acceptance of the decisions that they make about their personal oral health.