Guidelines for dental radiography immediately after a dento-alveolar trauma, a systematic literature review.

The objective with this study was to search for and to analyze the presence of scientific papers, guidelines, and recommendations in dental literature regarding which radiographs should be prescribed after a dento-alveolar trauma. We know from earlier that guidelines and recommendations are available in general in dental traumatology. The International Association of Dental Traumatology (IADT) has earlier developed guidelines for the management of dental trauma cases in general. There are also recommendations about useful intraoral radiographic methods when caries and periodontal disease are studied. An additional objective was to provide some guidelines for general practitioners about the most accurate radiographic examination immediately after a dento-alveolar trauma using intraoral radiographs or a common extraoral imaging method. Because radiographs are an important diagnostic tool for establishing a correct differential diagnosis after a trauma, radiographic guidelines and recommendations are of importance to be able to start the correct treatment. PubMed Central, Cochrane and World Wide Web were searched and the identified existing guidelines for different intraoral radiographic methods in dentistry were analyzed and found to be very few. Those that were identified were in general not so detailed and specific. In conclusion, we found an explicit need for more detailed guidelines regarding which intraoral and other dental radiographs should be prescribed initially in dental traumatology.