A dentistry question... from a medical student

[cheeseburgers]

Hey folks,

I'm a medical student working on an interdisciplinary project to study the prevalence of periodontal disease in patients attending a local clinic. I've run into difficulty in establishing the criteria for the various stages of periodontal disease. I am aware of the markers and how they are used (probing depth, bleeding on probing, radiographic bone loss, clinical attachment loss). However, I've found that institutions like the ADA use these classifications to classify specific teeth (rather than individual people) as having stage 1, 2, or 3 periodontal disease. Furthermore, dentists/hygienists have informed me that determining CAL was not feasible for the time/resource constraints of the clinic.

I understand how CAL is an important measure because of how it accounts for gingival enlargement/recession. Are there other criteria I could use instead to legitimately identify periodontitis severity? (We have all radiographs and other measurements previously mentioned). Thank you so much for any help you could offer.

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[Screwtape]

Use radiographs. Less than 15% bone loss is slight, 15-30% is moderate and more than 30% is severe. Talking horizontal bone loss. Look into resources from the American academy of periodontology.

 

[dyesht]

Hey folks,

I'm a medical student working on an interdisciplinary project to study the prevalence of periodontal disease in patients attending a local clinic. I've run into difficulty in establishing the criteria for the various stages of periodontal disease. I am aware of the markers and how they are used (probing depth, bleeding on probing, radiographic bone loss, clinical attachment loss). However, I've found that institutions like the ADA use these classifications to classify specific teeth (rather than individual people) as having stage 1, 2, or 3 periodontal disease. Furthermore, dentists/hygienists have informed me that determining CAL was not feasible for the time/resource constraints of the clinic.

I understand how CAL is an important measure because of how it accounts for gingival enlargement/recession. Are there other criteria I could use instead to legitimately identify periodontitis severity? (We have all radiographs and other measurements previously mentioned). Thank you so much for any help you could offer.

You could do a microbial test, by swabbing inside the specific areas with deep pockets and sending that information to a lab to get analyzed. There are certain bacteria that cause periodontitis and the results will tell you if the patient has them or not.