Sir, I read with interest the article by Scambler et al. regarding patient-centred care in dentistry.1 There seems to be considerable delay of this article being prepared and accepted for publication in August 2016, as the literature review was searched up to May 2012. The conclusion drawn from this systematic review may no longer be valid.

The General Dental Council launched Standards for the dental team on 30 September 2013. It replaces Standards for dental professionals and its supplementary guidance booklets (eg Principles of patient consent) published in 2005. To support the implementation of the new Standards for the dental team, the General Dental Council has also developed an interactive site with case studies, scenarios and frequently asked questions.2 The authors have made no attempt to mention this important update in the Introduction section of their paper.1 As this article1 is not the first systematic review on patient-centred care in dentistry, you will usually expect the authors of this article to provide an updated search of the literature and comment on any previous systematic review on this topic. I am surprised that the authors had made no attempt to mention a previous systematic review by Mills et al. in 2014.3 There are also a number of errors associated with this article.1 The old name of NICE was used in reference 4. In 2005, the name of NICE was changed from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Following the Health and Social Act 2012, NICE was renamed the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in 2013. In addition, superscripts have not been used in Tables 1 and 2 to link the included articles to the reference list at the end of the article.1 This causes some difficulties in locating the included articles.

Readers will be interested to read the latest guidance on when and how to update systematic reviews.5 A checklist can be found in Appendix 3 of the supplementary material on the web.6