Sports Dentistry - Education and Prevention: Play it Right!
Course Number: 679
IADT Guidelines for Treatment of Traumatic Dental Injuries
In 2020, the International Association of Dental Traumatology (IADT) had published the revised guidelines for the management of traumatic dental injuries.19 The original Guidelines were first published in 2001. They were revised and published in 2007 and then again in 2012. It is important that the Guidelines are revised on a regular basis since we learn more about the various injuries and how to manage them as time progresses. New research is being published regularly as experiments are conducted and as clinical cases are analyzed. Our search for more predictable ways to manage traumatic dental injuries is ongoing and also essential. Adopting and adhering to an evidence-based approach in the management of our trauma cases is of paramount importance. We are yet to discover the “perfect treatments” for every injury! We will probably never discover them, but we must strive to provide our patients with treatments based on the best available evidence at the time of the injury. Thus, the IADT Guidelines provide an extremely valuable source of information to help and guide clinicians in their quest for better outcomes following trauma to the soft and hard tissues in the oral cavity.19
The main aim of the Guidelines is to provide readers with easy-to-access information that can be consulted when faced with a traumatic dental injury. The Guidelines outline the emergency treatment that should ideally be provided for each injury and then some further general information is given regarding the follow-up management and possible outcomes. As they are Guidelines, they will not always be as detailed or prescriptive as some clinicians would prefer—however, it is not possible to cover every likely scenario. The Guidelines should be considered as general guides, and then the clinician must apply these and adapt them to each individual patient and each injury, based on a thorough case assessment.
Please take some time to get yourself familiarized with the 4 sections of the 2020 IADT Guidelines for the Evaluation and Management of Traumatic Dental Injuries: