The Dental Trauma Guide: An evidence-based treatment guide

Abstract

Dental trauma is complex, as it includes a wide range of different injury types with each type requiring specific considerations. It constitutes the fifth-most prevalent disease, and nearly 900 million individuals from 7 to 65 years of age are affected. The Dental Trauma Guide (DTG) project was initiated by Dr. Jens Andreasen in 2008 with the intention that all dentists around the world should be able to get access to the best available evidence regarding diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis for a patient with dental trauma within a few minutes. The DTG has been a global success, and today, 40,000 colleagues visit the DTG website every year. The website displays the treatment guidelines developed by the International Association of Dental Traumatology as well as visualized with film animations to make it easy and appealing for the users. The dentist can connect to the DTG Copenhagen database to compare his/her case with similar cases from the database, providing guidance to emergency treatment. Furthermore, DTG provides prognosis estimates for each individual injury type, as well as prognosis estimates for teeth with combinations of fracture and luxation injuries. Today, the DTG is a nonprofit organization with the aim of improving the level of care for dental trauma patients worldwide. Therefore, the DTG team has decided to offer free access for students at all dental schools in India.

Keywords

• avulsion
• dental trauma
• luxation
• traumatic dental injury