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This perhaps could become one of the most important considerations in healthcare (let alone implant dentistry).

For years and years, in fact forever, we have been measuring what have become known as 'surrogate outcomes' because they are quantifiable.

We measure the yes or no failure rate of dental implants, we measure the measurement of bone loss, we measure the height of the zenith from the incisal edge, we have even developed means of quantifying aesthetic scores with the pink aesthetic score / white aesthetic score template (PES/WES)

This is magnified across the whole of healthcare on the measurements of the success of surgical and medical interventions but surely the most important thing is PCO?

When did the main measurement of success in any healthcare procedure go beyond what the patient thinks is success? To be able to ask the patient how satisfied they are with the procedure or healthcare intervention that they have undergone must be one of the most important things to measure in the whole of healthcare and we almost never do it.

Hats off to the ITI and their Forum Implantologicum journal (volume 12 / issue 1 / 2016) for the three articles on PCO. These articles are a great introduction to PCO and an argument as to why they will become one of the most important things in implant dentistry. It's already something that we are trying to implement into a new research strategy in the practice and something which is not too difficult to do in terms of collecting the data from patients as they re-attend for recall appointments. What's more interesting is as I review the twenty clinical cases we are prospectively monitoring in anterior aesthetic cases and find myself disappointed with the overall results and the results of the practice, the PCO scores are better and the patients are happier. That's not to say I don't want to improve our individual performance in the cases we provide to be much more consistent over time but there is also an argument to say we are spending more time and more money on outcomes which patients don't actually require. Only by measuring PCO and reflecting on these can we adjust our treatment protocols appropriately.

You may already be aware of PCO and if you're not, I would suggest that over the next few years you will become more and more aware of it. Potentially the use of visual analogue scales in measuring PCO at the end of treatment could become the norm, not only in implant dentistry but in healthcare on the whole.

Blog Post Number: 988