ADA Living Guideline Program
These updated recommendations guide the use of cytology adjuncts for early oral cancer detection in an interactive format.
New recommendations are developed and existing guidelines are updated in collaboration between the ADA and Penn Dental Medicine.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are guidelines important?
Guidelines help make people healthy. They contain recommendations formulated by a panel of subject matter experts, researchers, patient partners, and other relevant interest-holders that are informed by research evidence. These recommendations are crafted to assist oral health providers, health care professionals, patients, and policymakers in making informed clinical and policy decisions.
ADA Living Evidence-Informed Guidelines: Shaping the Future of Clinical and Public Oral Health Decision-Making
How are living guidelines different than traditional guidelines?
Both living and traditional guidelines follow rigorous methodological processes to ensure thorough and thoughtful development.
Traditional guideline development typically takes more than 2 years to complete. In contrast, living guidelines are proactive. The process continually monitors literature for new evidence and data, allowing for individual recommendations to be updated regularly. This results in more relevant recommendations that can be implemented in real-time.
The living guidelines developed in this program will also be hosted digitally and use technology like artificial intelligence to identify and help analyze data, allowing for quick and efficient updates as soon as they are available.
How are living guidelines developed?
These living guidelines are approached proactively and continually, with the use of AI and other technology to identify information so experts can analyze it and update the recommendations in real-time.
Guidelines are developed by independent panels with multidisciplinary backgrounds and are methodologically supported by faculty and staff from the ADA and Penn Dental Medicine, who provide collaborative, efficient evidence synthesis with strong technological and methodological expertise.
- Part 1: Framework for the conduct of living systematic reviews and guidelines
- Part 3: Formulation of recommendations
- Part 4: Rationale and methodology for conducting systematic reviews to inform guidelines
How are topics determined for the ADA Living Guideline Program?
Guideline topics and priorities are defined by an advisory panel made up of interest-holders across the U.S. oral health system. Having representation across different sectors is a new and important part of the process when determining areas for the most impactful guideline development.
Both. The advisory panel will be looking at both new topics and existing guidelines to revisit and update.
The program can also help identify areas that need more research. For example, systematic reviews on a guideline topic may find there isn’t enough evidence to inform a particular topic. Through the process, the specific type of research needed to develop future guidelines can be identified.
The guidelines will be submitted to The Journal of the American Dental Association for publication. Quarterly updates to the research evidence supporting the guideline and, when warranted, updates to the guideline recommendations will be published and available in JADA and ADA.org/LivingGuideline.