Treatment planning with regard to retention or extraction decision-making is often challenging, especially to dental students and inexperienced dentists. Such a decision requires consideration of many factors and clinical parameters to achieve an accurate definitive plan and therefore proper dental care. Contemporary dentistry has adopted the concept of evidence-based practice guidelines. Our project has followed this concept, thus literature evidence, clinician’s expertise, patient’s desires and preferences were factored-in to develop a contemporary approach for determining the overall tooth prognosis accurately. Although, several studies have been published to report the affect of specific clinical parameters on individual tooth prognosis, these studies were isolated and focused on particular aspects for developing tooth prognosis scale rather than evaluation of teeth in comprehensive manner covering all factors relevant to retention or extraction decision-making. Retention of non-salvageable teeth as well as extraction of salvageable teeth can be drastically devastating to patients since they are time consuming, cost more time and money and may lead to loss of trust and confidence in care givers. Thus, a multi-factorial approach for development of accurate prognosis is required. This approach requires sound knowledge of principles that span across multiple dental specialties of restorative/prosthodontics, periodontics and endodontics. It is extremely difficult for clinicians to recall an extensive list of factors that determine the overall tooth prognosis, especially for dental students and less experienced clinicians. On the other hand, expert clinicians with their knowledge and years of experience are accustomed to critical thinking utilizing comprehensive list of factors on day-to-day clinical practice. However, experts may not always be accessible for consultation at the point of care. To fulfill this ever-outstanding need, we propose the development of a clinical decision support system that satisfies the concept of evidence-based dentistry considering all factors relative to research evidence, clinician’s expertise, patient’s desires and preferences. Utilizing Exsys Corvid expert system development platform, we have developed an efficient, interactive and user-friendly tool that can easily be hosted on the web, implemented in clinical settings, and integrated with treatment planning procedures into the daily clinical practice. In addition to assistance in clinical setting, our system can also be considered as an educational tool that helps dental students and inexperienced dentists to process challenging clinical scenarios like expert clinicians since it includes comprehensive list of factors that acquires evaluation and response prior to reaching final recommendations. Based on information entered by the user, our system provides clinical recommendations, options and alerts labeled with patients and providers identification numbers, time and date for documentation purposes. Since our system was designed to review user’s entry at the results screen, this feature helps clinicians to educate their patients, justify their clinical recommendations and therefore obtain patient’s trust and acceptance of treatment. It also allows sharing the results, electronically via emails, with patients and other providers for ease and quick communications. Due to the fact that our system was developed based on evidence-based guidelines, we anticipate improvement in prognostication and treatment planning of questionable teeth and therefore better clinical decision-making as a step to ensure patient’s satisfaction and enhanced dental care.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Biomedical Informatics
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Dental implants
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Dentistry
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Decision making
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Health Professions ETD Collection
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10007400001
Identifier
ETD_7912
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T38P63BG
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (x, 204 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Mohammad Sayed
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.