Informed consent in dentistry and medicine in Spain: Practical considerations and legality.

The healthcare practice of dentistry, as well as medicine, is framed within a legal environment. Patients have the right to know all the information related to any action performed on them and dental or medical doctors are obliged to obtain their patient?s prior written informed consent (IC) before undertaking any healthcare procedures. Here we reviewed the legality and jurisprudence in Spain regarding IC. We also used INFLESZ text readability analysis software to analyse a sample of official Spanish informed consent documents (ICDs) from different surgical and interventional procedures related to dentistry and oral cavity interventions. It is a mistake to confound IC with ICDs. This error …