A New Push to Preserve the Dental Pulp
A nearly $2 million NIH grant aims to help dentists bring vital pulp therapy into everyday practice through hands-on training, case-based learning, and evidence-based treatment guidelines.
While a minimally invasive approach is always the goal, there is no doubt that sometimes a significant procedure, such as a root canal, is necessary. Well, the National Institutes of Health is aiming to add more to the preventive arsenal by providing researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Texas at San Antonio Health Science Center, and University of Rochester with a nearly $2 million grant to improve oral health professionals’ ability to perform vital pulp therapy in order to preserve at-risk teeth.
The grant, with help from the National Dental Practice-Based Research Network and Project ECHO, will create the National Dental Practice Training Center in which education will be provided on the pulpotomy procedure. Researchers will investigate what keeps oral health professionals from performing a pulpotomy, which may not have been seen as an effective treatment for permanent teeth when many dentists received their training. Then they will create an educational track based on case-based learning and hands-on simulation using three-dimensional models to help dentists implement this procedure into practice in addition to improving their understanding of which patients are best suited for vital pulp therapy.
The grant will fund this research until August 2028 at which point outcomes will be evaluated. If they are positive, then it will move into a 3-year trial funded by the NIH. The ultimate goal of such projects is to accelerate the implementation of scientific evidence into clinical practice. Click here to read more.
