Oral care associated with a stay in an intensive care unit (ICU): A systematic review of clinical practice guidelines and scientific statements.

The aim of the present systematic review was to critically evaluate the recommendations from evidencebased clinical practice guidelines (CPG) and scientific statements (SS), as well as expert consensus, related to the management of oral complications in intensive care unit (ICU) patients.A search was made in the PubMed, Scopus, Ovid/Cochrane, and LILACS databases, following the CPG identification filters from the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). Both scientific repositories and document references were incorporated as well. The critical assessment was performed by means of the AGREE-II instrument (an ideal scenario) for CPG and SS, and using the AGREEREX instrument for recommendations (ideal and local scenarios).A total of 13 related recommendations from 4 SS were included. The mean score in AGREE-II was 58.25. The mean AGREE-REX scores were 45.82 and 39.07 for the ideal and local scenarios, respectively. The included recommendations focused on the oral care assessment, and the development of prevention and execution tools with regard to respiratory infections.There is a lack of CPG following a rigorous methodology that would incorporate recommendations for oral care in ICU. Dentists are responsible for the development and improvement of recommendations from CPG and/or SS to mitigate oral complications in ICU patients.