Dental anxiety is highly prevalent worldwide and anxiety about dental care can prevent people from seeking appropriate treatment. In addition, some patient groups are simply unable to receive dental care in its conventional sense due to conditions such as specific medical comorbidities, intellectual or developmental disabilities, significant mental health diagnoses or acquired cognitive impairment. Dental Behaviour Support (DBS) encompasses the full range of techniques that can be used to support patients to receive dental care. DBS approaches can vary in their complexity and invasiveness. They can be used in isolation or combination and range from simple behavioural techniques used in dental clinics through to the use of general anaesthesia to facilitate dental care delivery. These techniques are associated with different degrees of medical, and psychological risk, invasiveness, and restrictiveness. To study any DBS and enable DBS techniques to be compared in future research, important to identify what is ‘good’ and what ‘outcomes’ are important to patients and care providers.
The aim of this study is to develop a set of core outcomes for oral health services research involving dependent older adults.
Andrew Geddis-Regan, Consultant in Special Care Dentistry, University Dental Hospital of Manchester
Caoimhin MacGiolla Phadraig, Dublin Dental University Hospital.
Disease Category: Dentistry & oral health
Disease Name: Dental anxiety
Age Range: 16 - 120
Sex: Either
Nature of Intervention: Any
- Charities
- Clinical experts
- Patient/ support group representatives
- Researchers
- Service providers
- COS for clinical trials or clinical research
- COS for practice
- Delphi process
- Interview
- Systematic review
A systematic review will be undertaken to explore outcomes relevant to DBS. This will use search terms drawn from COS research for anaesthesia and peri-operative care and relevant clinical guidelines specific to certain DBS approaches. This review will explore but not be limited to outcomes relevant to non-pharmacological DBS approaches, sedation, and general anaesthesia.
Qualitative methods will be used to further explore potentially relevant outcomes and to prioritise those identified from the systematic review. Qualitative interviews will be planned with dentists, patients, patient representatives, and anaesthetists involved in dental sedation or general anaesthesia. Interviews will be thematically analysed to provide a degree of insight into perceptions on the importance and appropriateness of outcomes identified through the review.
A modified Delphi approach will be used to gain consensus on appropriate outcomes. Outcome measures will also be presented to patient groups to gather insight into patient-reported outcomes and which of these may be suitable to include in a COS. A consensus meeting, involving all stakeholders, will be held to finalise the COS. Once this has been done the outcome measures will be included in the National patient registry.