Evidence-Based Dentistry: ACQUIRE
Created by Health Science Librarians
Evidence-Based Dentistry eBook
How to Use Evidence-Based Dental Practices to Improve Clinical Decision-Making by ISBN: 9781684470617Publication Date: 2019-11-22How to Use Evidence-Based Dental Practices to Improve Your Clinical Decision-Making is the definitive resource for dental students and practitioners who want to learn from leaders in the field of evidence-based dentistry (EBD); quickly conduct searches for the latest research; master the skill of critically appraising clinical studies; confidently apply the latest research to patient care; teach others how to inform their practice with the latest clinical evidence; and access everything they need to become an EBD all-star.
Searching by topic
Search for Synthesized or Filtered Information
Step 1: Determine if there is a guideline or evidence summary addresses your question.
| Study Design | Definition | Resources to Consult |
| Guidelines |
"Developed by an expert panel, clinical practice guidelines critically appraise, summarize, and interpret recent and relevant clinical evidence to provide recommendations that can be applied to patient care" (American Dental Association). Also referred to as: clinical guideline, clinical practice guideline. |
Step 2: If no guideline addresses your question, search for a meta-analysis or systematic review.
| Study Design | Definition | Resources to Consult |
| Meta-analysis | Meta-analysis is the statistical combination of results from two or more separate studies. They are systematic reviews taken one step further by pooling, or combining, the data of similar studies to improve precision, to answer questions not posed by individual studies, or to settle controversies from conflicting studies (Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews. | |
| Systematic Review | A systematic review is a literature review that gathers all of the available evidence matching pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question. It uses explicit, systematic methods, documented in a protocol, to minimize bias, provide reliable findings, and inform decision-making (Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews. |
Search for Primary Studies
Step 3: If unable to locate a guideline, meta-analysis or systematic review that addresses your question, then search for primary studies by clinical question type. Follow the evidence pyramid for study design preference.
| Type of Question/Need | Resources to Consult |
| Therapy/Prevention (General) | |
| Therapy/Prevention (Drug Therapy) | |
| Harm/Etiology | |
| Diagnosis | |
| Prognosis | |
| Rarely or newly published topic |
|
Adapted from Stellrecht, E & Booth HA. (2019). Searching for the best oral health evidence: strategies, tips, and resources. In: Carrasco-Labra A, Brignardello-Petersen R, Glick M, Azarpazhooh A, & Guyatt G, eds. How to Use Evidence-Based Dental Practices to Improve Clinical Decision-Making. American Dental Association.
Evidence Pyramid
Evidence, or the literature, is made up of both research and non-research publications. Evidence is grouped in a pyramid, or hierarchy, where the best or strongest type is found at the top and lowest or weaker is found at the bottom. As the quality of the information increases, the amount of available literature on that topic decreases, hence the pyramid structure.
Broadly, publications can be separated into 3 groups:
- Non-research (expert opinion, editorials, narrative reviews)
- Primary studies (further divided into experimental or observational studies)
- Synthesized or filtered information (guidelines, meta-analyses, systematic reviews)
Jones, E.P. (2023). Evidence pyramid [image].
Guidelines
- Epistemonikos
Combines the best of Evidence-Based Health Care, information technologies and a network of experts to provide a unique tool for people making decisions concerning clinical or health-policy questions. - TRIP Database : the Search Engine for Evidence-Based MedicineOpen access clinical search engine. Contains research papers, systematic reviews, and guidelines. Create an account and list University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as your institution to get the Find@UNC button on listings.
- Dynamed
DynaMed Plus is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for physicians and other health care professionals for use at the point-of-care. Content is written by a team of physicians and researchers who synthesize the evidence and provide objective analysis - Clinical Practice Guidelines and Dental Evidence (ADA)
Collection of guidelines and evidence-based dentistry resources from the ADA. - ECRI Guidelines TrustFilter guidelines by clinical practice area to dentistry.
Databases
- Cochrane Library
Leading source for full-text systematic reviews in health care. Searches a collection of databases that includes the CDSR, CENTRAL, Clinical Answers, and selected reviews from Epistemonikos. RCTs are from Medline, Embase, ClinicalTrials.gov, the WHO ICTRP, CINAHL (since 2020) and more. Click on "Search Limits" or the Browse tab to select content from a specific database.
More information on searching Cochrane Library can be found here.
- PubMed
Database of biomedical literature from the National Library of Medicine covering journal articles about medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, biology and public health from 1950 to the present; multiple mobile apps available, provides access to MEDLINE, etc. Includes links to full text of UNC-CH's electronic journal subscriptions.
More information on searching PubMed can be found here.
Tips for limiting PubMed results by study design:
- Meta-analysis
- Enter search words for the clinical question
- On the results page, select Meta-Analysis under Article Types in the left-hand filters sidebar
- Systematic Reviews
- Enter search words for the clinical question
- On the results page, select Systematic Reviews under Article Types in the left-hand filters sidebar
- Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)
- Enter search words for the clinical question
- On the results page, select Randomized Controlled Trial under Article Types in the left-hand filters sidebar
- Cohort Studies
- Enter search words for the clinical question
- Add Cohort Studies[MeSH] to the search words
- Case-Control Studies
- Enter search terms for the clinical question
- Add Case-Control Studies[Mesh] to the search words
- Embase
Highly versatile, multipurpose and up-to-date biomedical database covering the most important international biomedical literature from 1947 to the present day. Supports drug discovery & development, pharmacovigilance, medical device development and post-market surveillance, and evidence-based medicine.
More information on searching Embase can be found here.
- CINAHL Plus with Full Text
CINAHL Plus with Full Text is a collection of more than 770 full text nursing & allied health journals dating as far back as 1937, with bibliographic indexing for more than 5,000 additional nursing and related journals. Also included are select health care books, nursing dissertations, conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters.
More information on searching CINAHL can be found here.
- Scopus
A large citation and abstracting database providing comprehensive coverage of the peer-reviewed journal and conference literature, with links to full-text where available through the library; includes scientific, technical, medical, social science and arts and humanities disciplines and indexes over 20,500 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers including over 340 book series. Like Web of Science, Scopus allows researchers to perform citation searches to see how many times a work has been cited, by whom, and to rank searches by times cited, for the period 1996 -present, as well as its curated index of over 375 scientific web pages and over 24 million patents.
More information on searching Scopus can be found here.
- Google Scholar
Enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
Search Worksheet and Search Example
- Search WorksheetThis worksheet is to be used to guide a searcher through: using PICO to clearly articulate a clinical question of interest; using the parts of the clinical question to create and then revise a PubMed search; selecting an article based on the evidence hierarchy; and linking to tools to use to critically appraise the selected article(s).
- Search Example Worksheet: Electric / Manual ToothbrushesThis worksheet demonstrates: using PICO to clearly articulate a sample clinical question; constructing and revising a PubMed search; selecting an article based on the evidence hierarchy. It links to a tool to use in critically appraising the selected article.