Evaluation of cardiac risk in dental patients.

Patients with cardiac disease, cardiac symptoms and related co-morbidities are increasingly being encountered in dental practice. Current methods of medical risk assessment can however be problematic. This paper represents a multi-speciality consensus on how to identify patients that may be more at risk of an adverse cardiac event occurring perio-operatively i.e. during or in the first few weeks after a dental procedure. Drawing on guidelines for surgery and the available literature, we present on an algorithm which aims to inform dental practitioners' decisions about which patients can be managed in primary care and which should be considered for assessment by a dental specialist together with a methodology thereof.