All adults ought to have an extraoral and intraoral tactile and visual exam when seeing their dentists. This recommendation comes straight from the American Dental Association (ADA) in the most recent version of its developed recommendations, published October 2017 in the Journal of the American Dental Association.

ADA Guideline Takeaways

This guideline provides an outline of the potential use of various tools for evaluating lesions and possibly detrimental disorders affecting oral health.

The new ADA guidelines also include such instructions as:

• When dentists examine their patients, they must make a distinction between mouths that are free of lesions, mouths that have benign lesions, and mouths containing lesions that could be malignant. Actions should then be taken accordingly.
• When lesions might be malignant, doctors should perform a biopsy or refer their patients to a specialist.
• Dentists should not use light-based or salivary adjuncts in their evaluations of lesions.

ADA Guidelines Created by Expert Panel

These new guidelines arose from an expert panel assembled by the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and the Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry after they reviewed high-quality evidence. The guidelines, published in the October issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association, include a simple summary of the recommendations contained within the formal protocol.

A Chairside Guide that will make it easy for clinicians to reference will also be published, according to Dr. Mark Lingden, Ph.D.,  the chair of the expert panel responsible for the guidelines. Dr. Lingden is a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and an oral and maxillofacial pathologist.

The ADA guidelines are an updated version of the ADA’s previous recommendations on screening for oral squamous cell carcinomas that had been set in place in 2010.

San Diego’s Premier Dental Practitioner

Dr. Michael McBride has been practicing dentistry for thirty years and remains active in the dental community to ensure his practice reflects the most modern techniques and guidelines possible in San Diego. Contact McBride Dental for all of your oral health care needs.

Sources:

https://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2017-archive/september/ada-develops-guideline-for-evaluating-potentially-malignant-disorders-in-the-oral-cavity

https://jada.ada.org/article/S0002-8177(14)61524-5/abstract