Evidence summary: do people living in deprived areas define oral health differently from people who live in less deprived areas?

Since August 2009, members of the Primary Care Dentistry Research Forum (http://www.dentistryresearch.org) have taken part in an online vote to identify questions in day-to-day practise that they felt most needed to be answered with conclusive research. The question which received the most votes formed the subject of a critical appraisal of the relevant literature. Each month a new round of voting takes place to decide which further questions will be reviewed. Dental practitioners and dental care professionals are encouraged to take part in the voting and submit their own questions to be included in the vote by joining the website. This paper details a summary of the findings of the fifth critical appraisal. The results of the critical appraisal conclude that there is a lack of evidence relating to perceptions of oral health in deprived areas. There were no studies identified that have compared the perceptions of oral health among people from deprived areas with those from non-deprived areas in the UK.