Louisiana State Board of Dentistry

Louisiana dentist CE requirements

The published continuing-education requirements for a Louisiana dental license, laid out clearly so you can see the whole picture before your renewal.

What the board requires

• 30 hrsTotal per biennial cycle.
• 3 hrsOpioid management course (drug diversion, best-practice controlled-substance prescribing, or addiction treatment) - one-time career requirement, counted within the total.
• Min 20 hrsAt least 20 of the 30 hours must be personally attended (in-person) clinical courses.
• Up to 10 hrsNo more than 10 of the 30 hours may be done online or via correspondence (written examination required).
• RequiredBasic Life Support (BLS) certification must be maintained at all times. It does NOT count as one of the 30 CE hours, though a BLS/CPR course C may separately earn 3 personally-attended clinical hours. (does not count toward CE hours).

Common questions

Source: Louisiana State Board of Dentistry (https://www.lsbd.org/). RECONCILIATION SUMMARY (Louisiana US-LA dentist CE hours requirement). Two blind extractors (A and B) were reconciled. This is an hours requirement extraction; it is NOT verified or represented as complete, and a human operator must sign off before this state goes live. (a) WHAT FULLY AGREES: Both extractors agree on the entire numeric spine except provider. Agreed values adopted verbatim: cycle = 24 months, biennial; totalHours = 30; the single mandated topic = a 3-hour opioid management course (drug diversion / best-practice controlled-substance prescribing / addiction treatment); formatCaps = a 20-hour personally-attended (live) clinical floor plus a 10-hour online-or-correspondence ceiling (written exam required for the distance hours); excludedFormats = empty; carryover = 0; BLS placed in requiredCredentials (not counted as CE). Format partition is clean: live_lecture/live_participation appear only in the floor cap, online_selfstudy/correspondence only in the ceiling cap. (b) WITHIN vs ADDITIVE: The opioid topic is resolved to WITHIN. Board text: "3 of the 30 hours listed in Paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Subsection must include an opioid management course...". The 3 hours are explicitly a subset of the 30, not on top. Both extractors also marked it within. Resolved, no ambiguity on counting. It is a one-time career requirement (oneTime true); once satisfied it remains met, and an exemption exists for dentists who attest they do not prescribe/administer/dispense controlled substances. (c) WHY FLAGGED (flagged_ambiguous): (1) Provider fields DISAGREE between extractors (resolved below but human must confirm). (2) The entire numeric spine was read only from a SECONDARY MIRROR (law.cornell.edu / Cornell Legal Information Institute), not the primary state-published Louisiana Administrative Code .gov text; every citation carries verified:false. (3) The 24-month biennial cycle is INFERRED from Section 1611 subsection J ("no more than six in any two-year biennial renewal period"), not stated in the rule's opening subsections. Any one of these forces flagged_ambiguous; all three are present. (d) EXTRACTION FLAGS (every disagreement or source-quality concern a human reviewer must check): - PROVIDER DISAGREEMENT: Extractor A returned accepts=[state_approved], strict=true, citing "approved as set forth in Section 1615" WITHOUT reading Section 1615. Extractor B actually read Section 1615 and returned accepts=[state_approved, CERP, PACE], strict=false, listing enumerated sponsors (ADA and affiliates, Academy of General Dentistry, ADHA, National Dental Association, AADB, ADA-accredited dental school CE, armed services/VA, specialty associations and study clubs, American Heart Association and American Red Cross for CPR, and ACCME). B's value is BETTER SOURCED (it read the sponsor section) and was adopted. Human must confirm from primary code whether CERP (ADA) and PACE (AGD) acceptance is accurate and whether strict should be false vs true. - MIRROR-ONLY SOURCE: All Section 1611 and Section 1615 quotes come from Cornell LII, a mirror. Verify the 30-hour total, the 20/10 split, and the opioid mandate against the primary Louisiana Administrative Code and/or the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry. - CYCLE INFERENCE: 24-month biennial is inferred from subsection J, not directly stated at the top of Section 1611. Confirm renewal period length and the December 31 expiration/reporting. - BLS DUAL NATURE / COUNTING TREATMENT: BLS certification must be HELD at all times (a credential, does NOT count toward the 30). Separately, a BLS/CPR course "C" earns 3 personally-attended clinical hours. Extractor A cited the official board CE page (lsbd.org/conted.htm) for the hold-at-all-times mandate (adopted here as the better source); Extractor B cited the mirror. Section 1611 also states certain CPR/ACLS/PALS courses required under Section 1503 do NOT count, which nuances the counting treatment for sedation/anesthesia permit holders. Human must confirm exact BLS counting. - POSSIBLE STALE TOTAL: An older version of this rule reportedly required 40 hours; the current text read states 30. Confirm 30 is current. - NOT MODELED: First-time renewers are reported exempt from CE except the opioid course and CPR/BLS. A separate 6-hour anesthesia/sedation CE requirement applies only to sedation/anesthesia permit holders (Section 1503), not to a general dentist renewal, so it is excluded here. No infection control, ethics/jurisprudence, radiography, or other subject topic is mandated for general renewal beyond the opioid course. A content restriction (all hours must be "clinical" courses pertaining to actual delivery of dental services, and no credit for activities directed primarily at persons preparing for Louisiana licensure) is noted here but is not a format code or controlled-vocabulary subject. These are the published requirements as we read them, not legal or board advice, and CEChart does not certify compliance. Confirm your requirements with Louisiana State Board of Dentistry before you rely on them.