CPD activity in Ethics:
Ethical Aspects Of Dental Clinical Research Methods
Results of clinical dental research need to be valid and precise, in order to reflect therapeutic reality. Such validity and precision depend to a larger extent on the applied research method. If methods are chosen that are either inappropriate, too weak or simply wrong then this will lead to research results that are unfit for guiding daily dental practice. The indiscriminate clinical application of recommendations from such research, particularly concerning specific treatment methods, materials or devices, can lead to an ethical dilemma for dental patients and dentists, since the former trusts to receive and the latter to provide such treatment, based on the best evidence available. However, such best evidence is not given when research is based on faulty research methods. The consequences may include that: (i) less effective treatments are chosen above more effective ones; (ii) unnecessary higher costs are incurred for treatments for which equally effective, but less costly alternatives are available; (iii) patients may even be harmed when receiving treatments for which high-quality evidence is lacking.
For that reason, it is an ethical imperative that dentists and allied oral health care provider are able to discern whether clinical recommendations are based on sound research methods or not.
This CPD activity presents in form of an online-based journal club, aspects of research methodology that are important for oral health care provider to recognize, in order to assure ethical dental practise. At present, the following topics are presented:
[1] Laboratory versus clinical research as basis for clinical recommendations
[2] The need for randomisation in clinical studies
[3] Direct versus naïve indirect comparison in clinical studies
