AVULSED PERMANENT TEETH - A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND TREATMENT GUIDELINES

Dental trauma represents one of the few situations where dentists are called upon to make unscheduled diagnostic and treatment decisions in an area that is outside their routine experience. Since patients who s ustain an avulsion present infrequently, except in child-oriented or e mergency-based practices, clinicians often make diagnostic and managem ent decisions based upon their previous rare treatment experiences. Cl inicians also rely on published guidelines for this aspect of their pr actice and expect these standards to be up-to-date and based on curren t research information. None of the current protocols has been tested by a prospective longitudinal outcome study in humans. Nevertheless, c urrent guidelines have become the standard for clinical practice aroun d the world. An effort must be made to develop treatment protocols tha t are based upon the biological mechanisms that underlie periodontal w ound healing.