Dental Case Reports

Case reports related to dental science are medical records of individual patient’s treatment that document a variety of procedures and outcomes. They provide important insight into the diagnosis, treatment, and management of a wide range of dental and oral diseases. The purpose of a case report is to accurately document a patient's care and record a particular ailment that may help others in the same field or add insights to an existing understanding. Case reports comprise of a comprehensive analysis of an individual patient’s experience and discovery. It gathers the patient’s history, the succession of events, how a condition was detected and the cure or management of the disease. In dental science, case reports are also typically in print, distributed in journal articles, with all of the pertinent data and detailed analysis. These reports often help inform other clinicians and researchers, and often provide a basis for comparison among different treatments. Case reports in dental science are prominent in helping dental professionals understand the various treatments and therapies available to a patient. It also helps to identify any issues with the treatment which can then be addressed. They also provide evidence as to the effective management of dental health—what works and what does not—which can aid in research design and clinical practice. Case reports in dental science can contain descriptive details, complex medical terminology and patient-specific language, as well as any procedures the patient received. By capturing these details, oral health professionals can compare treatments, diagnoses and outcomes between similar cases, and determine aberrations between them. Additionally, they may use the case report to generate hypotheses for future studies. Case reports in dental science are important to the field of oral healthcare for a variety of reasons. Not only do they provide data on which medical decisions can be made, but by looking at the effects of a particular treatment they can help others to improve the clinical practice of future patients. Case reports have the potential to provide short-term outcomes and help inform long-term knowledge, since detailed observations of a single patient can reveal important, yet often overlooked, findings.