Evidence-based suggestions to improve the methodological issues in reporting of prevalence studies on gingival recession

Abstract

Gingival recession (GR) is considered a public health problem which is highly prevalent across different populations. Accuracy of psychometric properties of prevalence estimates of GR reported in epidemiological studies is important to facilitate setting public health goals, planning of public health programs, implementation of best practices and thereby developing public health policy. However, the reported prevalence estimates are influenced by the methodological variations among different studies, as observed in our recently published systematic review and meta-analysis on the global prevalence of GR. It substantially limits the comparability between studies and inferences about the true global variation in the prevalence of GR are difficult to establish. To address these issues, this commentary suggests to follow the standardized principles related to study design, clinical examination protocol, and characteristics of study subjects in future epidemiological studies on prevalence estimates of GR. Furthermore, the inclusion of additional domains in the reporting data is suggested for a deeper insight into the patterns of GR in different populations. Our suggestions are derived from a pragmatic approach and their consistent implementation would improve the reporting quality and achieve uniformity in future studies, thus benefitting the research in this area.