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Supporting Your Practice

Evidence-based advice: Re-evaluating preconceptions and habits

Dr. Fotinos Panagakos, Global Director, Scientific Affairs, at Colgate-Palmolive, spoke with Dr. Chiraz Guessaier about his recent participation at the British Dental Asscoiation Conference with a lecture titled: Evidence based advice: Re-evaluating preconceptions and habits.

Highlights

Clinical evidence is important when making responsible treatment decisions for patients. As a starting point, clinicians must know where to find good information and discriminate wisely. Presently, there are so many avenues to find information, especially online, and this can sometimes lead us astray and in other cases, create information “overload”. Patients also contribute to the clinicians’ overwhelmed state, at times, by bringing more information that they have found or researched about a specific problem they are facing which may or may not be accurate.

There are three main sources of information that clinicians can use to base their decisions on.
1. The presenting patient’s clinical signs and symptoms
2. Clinical experience
3. Published scientific evidence from peer-reviewed sources

To avoid bias in research, studies conducted by industry is funded by companies; however, the research is conducted and published by experts. The research is, then, peer-reviewed and is available for use in systematic reviews such as the Cochrane Collaborative. Furthermore, all research using human subjects must be registered with a third party. The results are also sent to this third party to ensure all data is presented and the final results are not skewed.

In the end, it is important for clinicians to rely on their relationship and rapport with their patients. Tailoring care and advice for each patient should be based on the clinician’s knowledge of the patient, his/her needs and what type of information or resources resonate with him/her. Overall, this encompasses the concept of patient-centered care.

 

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