Abstract
BACKGROUND: Clinical practice guidelines produced by developed countries seemed to be not completely feasible for developing countries due to their different local context. In this study, we designed a customized guideline about antibiotic prophylaxis before dental procedures for Iranian general dentists. METHODS: This study was conducted of two parts, including a qualitative part and a cross-sectional analytic part. A multidisciplinary team searched for related guidelines and other documents, selected the most updated and high quality ones, customized their recommendations based on available antibiotics in Iran, prepared a draft adapted guideline and summarized its recommendations in 3 flowcharts. An expert panel (20 specialists of four Iranian dental universities) participated in a consensus process, afterwards to determine the relevance and clarity of the flowcharts and their items. Then the Content Validity Indices (CVIs) were calculated and any items with CVI higher than 0.79 remained. RESULTS: The adapted recommendations were summarized in flowcharts A to C. Two separate groups of patients who need antibiotic prophylaxis were presented in flowchart A; including those with high risk for distant-site infection (infective endocarditis and prosthetic joint infection) and those at risk for poor healing and orofacial infection (due to impaired immunologic function). Flowcharts B and C described antibiotic regimen and also the dental procedures where antibiotic prophylaxis was needed for mentioned groups. The content validity indices and the percentages of agreement between the expert panel members were considerably high. CONCLUSIONS: A localized, clear and straight forward guideline that addresses all groups of dental patients who need antibiotic prophylaxis has been produced for Iranian general dentists.