23 June 2025

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ADA, Penn Dental Medicine Announce First Living Guideline Program in Oral Health

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Oral healthcare providers and patients will soon receive more frequent, evidence-informed recommendations to advance oral and overall health with the establishment of the ADA Living Guideline Program.

This pioneering collaboration between the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Center for Integrative Global Oral Health at Penn Dental Medicine is the first and only known living guideline program dedicated to oral health.

“Oral disease is estimated to affect almost half the world’s population, and the number of cases is growing faster than the population worldwide,” said Dr. Ashraf Fouad, chair of the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and Professor and Chair, Department of Endodontics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry. “The ADA Living Guideline Program will provide dentists and other healthcare professionals with continually updated, evidence-based information to help improve the oral health of their patients.”

Its first focus will be an update of a 2017 ADA guideline on the evaluation of potentially malignant disorders and oral squamous cell carcinoma in the oral cavity. The first recommendation is expected to be published digitally later this year in The Journal of the American Dental Association and on ADA.org.

Guideline topics are selected and prioritized by an advisory group composed of representatives from the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and several other governmental and professional dental organizations.

“This initiative builds upon previous foundational work on guideline development at the ADA and leverages artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to enable continuous and rapid incorporation of scientific findings from the biomedical literature into new and existing guidelines,” says Principal Investigator Dr. Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Associate Professor and Director, Cochrane Oral Health Collaborating Center at Penn Dental Medicine.

Guidelines contain evidence-informed recommendations formulated by independent panels designed to assist patients, oral health providers, and healthcare professionals as a resource when making informed care decisions.

Living guidelines uphold the methodological rigor of traditional guidelines but are updated as soon as new evidence emerges and is carefully reviewed. This enhancement of the traditional guideline process, which usually updates every 3–5 years, allows patients, the profession, policymakers, and others to adopt the information more quickly.

“We are proud to bring this important service to our profession and look forward to improving the oral health of millions of patients through these guidelines,” says Penn Dental Medicine’s Dean, Dr. Mark S. Wolff.

Source: www.ADA.org/livingguideline