Background: Dentistry guidelines are suggestions for clinical practice based on the best available scientific evidence and drawn up in a structured, sensible, and honest manner. When faced with the lack of quality evidence, the advice of specialists in the matter is used as a basis for clinical practice. Nevertheless, often times, systematic reviews are unknown or ignored in drawing up a guideline and are substituted by a general consensus of the drafters, whose bias compromises the quality of the very instructions being composed. Objectives: To verify the presence of Cochrane systematic reviews in bibliographic references of dentistry prevention and treatment guidelines published in databases. Methods: Guidelines listed in the MEDLINE and LILACS databases were searched. The search strategy was developed based on medical subject headings (MeSH), using words referring to dentistry and adapted to each database: dental general practice; dentistry; oral medicine; stomatology; community dentistry; dental education; graduate dental education; continuing dental education. The tool in each database was used to limit the search with respect to the type of publication (practice guideline). The dates of the publications searched ranged from 1996, with the establishment of the oral health group, to March 2008. Once guidelines were obtained, they were reviewed to verify whether or not they contained Cochrane systematic reviews in the guidelines’ bibliographic references. In the absence of any reference to a Cochrane systematic review in the bibliography, we checked to see whether such were not included because no review existed or because no review had been consulted. Results: The results of the searches are still being reviewed by the researchers and will be available in August 2008. Conclusions: Awaiting results.