Dental Patient-Reported Outcome Measures Are Essential for Evidence-Based Prosthetic Dentistry

For evidence-based dental treatment decision-making in prosthetic dentistry, evidence from scientific studies performed in the appropriate population with state-of-the-art interventions, reasonable controls, and relevant outcomes is required. This article will briefly review patient populations involved and interventions applied in prosthetic dentistry and more extensively review outcomes used for evidence-based dental treatment decision-making in prosthetic dentistry. Dental patient populations in prosthetic dentistry usually suffer from extensive loss of tooth substance and/or tooth loss. Typical interventions in prosthetic dentistry are replacement of a substantial amount of tooth structure and lost teeth with conventional or implant-supported fixed or removable dental protheses. Sufficient controls or comparisons should also involve no treatment for tooth loss as a legitimate option. For many years, prosthodontic treatment almost solely focused on disease-oriented outcomes such as numerical replacement of missing teeth to restore current oral health and prevent further deterioration, and now, dental patient-reported outcomes (dPROs), the outcomes that are directly reported by the patient, are gaining increasing attention. dPROs are what matters most for the patient, and dPRO measures have several advantages when applied in clinical practice and research settings compared with traditional disease-oriented measures such as ease of applicability and less burdensome for the clinicians. In evidence-based prosthetic dentistry, there should be a shift to fewer applied dPRO measures, with only one instrument becoming standard. Furthermore, dPROs will probably also become tools to assess patients' oral health status in clinical practice in a standardized manner. Finally, information on dPROs will become an integral part of evidence-based treatment decision-making in prosthetic dentistry.