The use of tools to support oral lesion description in oral medicine referrals

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals.

The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by Paul Hellyer

Abstract

The use of response prompts improves the quality of referral letters

Main

Zimmermann C, Meurer M, Telino de Lacerda J, Ferreira de Mello A. Grando L. Braz Oral Res 2017; https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-3107bor-2017.vol31.0093

Incorrectly describing oral lesions when referring to secondary care may result in delay, poor prioritisation, unnecessary repetition of tests and possibly inadequate treatment.

In this study, dental practitioners (n = 112) were asked to describe two different lesions which were displayed on a screen. They were to write 1) freehand descriptions, 2) descriptions using the Brazilian Ministry of Health (MOH) standard referral form, and 3) descriptions using the Oral Descriptor (OralDESC) form being trialled. The MOH form had headings (location, size, colour etc) with adjacent blank boxes to enter the requested information. The OralDESC form was similar but used descriptors, pictograms or or further questions to prompt the responses.

The responses were measured against gold standard descriptions from three professors of oral medicine. The results showed that the use of the OralDESC form improved the quality of referrals.