While there is an abundance of research protocols to guide researchers, there is not a guideline for reporting oral epidemiologic studies to inform burden estimation. The STROBE guidelines are widely used but were devised for reporting analytical not descriptive studies. Furthermore, they lack details on how to measure and report common oral conditions.
By producing a guideline and its associated checklist outlining the key information to be reported, we aim to promote transparency, clarity, and comparability of scientific reporting, specifically for (person-level) prevalence and incidence descriptive studies of untreated caries, severe periodontitis and edentulism.
GROESBE will facilitate reliable comparison of emerging prevalence and incidence data on common oral conditions across settings worldwide, and the synthesis of robust evidence to inform estimation of disease burden in future iterations of the Global Burden of Disease study.