Dental therapists can offer appropriate dental health care for underserved populations, a US study has confirmed. The two-year evaluation of a dental therapists programme in Alaska claims to support the fact that therapists can perform basic procedures, like sealant placement and filling preparations, which can help overcome significant shortages of dental professionals in rural areas.
Dental therapists are currently used to perform dentist tasks in many countries inluding Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. Besides Montana, Alaska has been the first US state to allow therapists to provide higher dental care. Therapists there have been performing basic surgical procedures under the supervision of dentists in remote Native villages since 2005.
According to government statistics, Alaska has enough dentists but fails to provide appropiate dental care to its widely scattered Native population.
National and local dental associations in the US have criticised the study for being too concise. A speaker of the American Dental Association said that it does not incorporate enough therapists to provide data that would justify applying the model in other states. The organisation, which represents all dentists in the United States, has rejected the idea to let non-dentists perform surgical procedures for years.
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