QUANTIFYING THE SCIENTIFIC STUDIES IN FORENSIC DENTISTRY PRESENTED AT MEETINGS OF THE “SOCIEDADE BRASILEIRA DE PESQUISA ODONTOLÓGICA” (SBPQO) BETWEEN 2013 AND 2018

Abstract

Currently, Brazil hosts one of the biggest communities of Forensic Dentists worldwide. In practice, Forensic Dentistry may be performed within official forensic services and through ad hoc consultancy. Hence, Training and education with high-level scientific evidence is a must. This study aimed to quantify the scientific studies presented at meeting of the “Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa Odontológica” (SBPqO). The sample consisted of the annals of the 30^th, 31^st, 32^nd, 33^rd, 34^th and 35^th scientific meetings of the SBPqO published between 2013 and 2018. The annals were retrieved from the website of SBPqO (www.sbpqo.org.br) and were revisited by two examiners. A search string of keywords was used to detect eligible abstracts initially related to Forensic Dentistry. Titles and abstracts of the scientific studies initially detected were read and filtered for data extraction. Year of publication, university in which the study was carried out and field within Forensic Dentistry were recorded. In total, 199 abstract related to Forensic Dentistry were detected. Sequentially, 29, 28, 49, 38, 29, 26 abstract were published in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively. Forty-three institutions were detected in the search, most of them were public (n=29; 67.44%) – these universities were responsible for most of the abstracts (n=176, 88.44%). Anthropological studies were the most prevalent (n=69; 34.67%), especially those exclusively related to age estimation (n=35; 50.72%). Between 2013 and 2018, abstracts in Forensic Dentistry represented only 1.11% of the studies in Dentistry. The scenario depicted from the most recent annals of the SBPqO shows that the scientific literature in Forensic Dentistry produced by Brazilian institutions remains scarce. Efforts should be made to encourage and trigger more investigations in the field.