The quantification of dental trauma in clinical medical-legal practice. An update

Dental trauma is very frequent in clinical legal medicine practice and, even if it usually has a low severity it often posses difficult problems for the legal medicine specialist. It is the case of evaluating the severity of the injuries in order to asses the judicial implications. In 2002 we have published a grading methodology for evaluating the severity of trauma lesions in oro-maxillo-facial, OMF, pathology. However, due to recent advances in the field this grading methodology is in need for an update, especially regarding dental lesions, which is the purpose of this article. This update will be useful for both medical-legal and for dental physicians, which will have an updated tool to quantify the severity of OMF lesions. The article analyses the number of medical care days for dental dislocation, fractures and dental implants. Additionally authors presents some clinical legal medicine issues when evaluating the dental implants.