The Various Aspects of Periodontal Treatment - Research Paper Example

They carried out a survey among 100 (64 males & 34 females) general dental practitioners through a questionnaire, which was aimed to get feedback and opinions from both general practitioners (GPs) and dental specialists with regard to periodontal care. Multivariate Logistic Regression was used to find out the key variable impacting the survey responses.

They quoted that “In a study of a similar pattern, Zemanovich et al, have evaluated the demographic variables affecting patient referrals from general dental clinic to a periodontist. They concluded that various factors such as gender of the dentist and the proximity to a periodontist affected the number of referrals by a general dentist.”
The results showed that 98% of the GPs conducted the initial surgical therapy by themselves without having any recommendation to do so and performed scaling whilst advising certain mouthwashes and brushing techniques. However, the results revealed that over 67% of the dentists never performed splinting. The survey further revealed that the role of a periodontist was found limited to surgical therapy and most of the dentists did not carry out Root planning. Another key finding indicated that the dentists have a greater level of awareness with regard to methods demonstrating maintenance of oral hygiene.

Despite having a sign of periodontal disease, we found that only 33% of the dentists referred patients to a periodontist. Further, many GPs do not believe that implant is a core of curing periodontal disease thus there is a difference in opinion among general dentists with regard to the reliability of periodontal treatment.
The study concluded with the following recommendations:

“Such studies should be performed in future to get an overall perception of the general dentists toward periodontal treatment in India. Such studies performed at different intervals of time in the same cities can also provide an idea about the changing trends and patterns of dental treatment performed by general dental practitioners. Such studies can also flash a warning light, and force the general dentist and the periodontist to introspect for the betterment of the speciality.” Read More