Dental Trauma Guidelines

Guidelines have been developed for management of numerous medical and dental conditions. If carefully developed and based on best available evidence, they serve a very useful purpose in giving information in dealing with health problems to health care providers as well as patients. The history of trauma guidelines is quite limited, but the American Association of Endodontists has been involved since the 1980s. In recent years, the International Association of Dental Traumatology has developed guidelines for management of traumatic dental injuries, with input from specialists in all relevant disciplines of dentistry. These guidelines, first developed and published in 2001 and updated twice since then, have been accepted as reliable recommendations for the urgent care of traumatic dental injuries; the most recent trauma guidelines were completed by the International Association of Dental Traumatology and published in 2012. The application of these guidelines is to provide both patients and practitioners with the best available information about management of such injuries. As with most guidelines, there are limitations that are primarily related to the level of evidence available, which is low. However, they are useful and, when followed, can lead to better outcomes than when no guidelines are used.