Patients receiving comprehensive periodontal treatment have better clinical outcomes than patients receiving conventional periodontal treatment

Background/purpose: In Taiwan, more than 90% of people aged 35-44 years have periodontal disease. To reduce periodontal disease in Taiwanese people, the National Health Insurance (NHI) system included the comprehensive periodontal treatment project (CPTP) in 2010. The CPTP mainly emphasizes oral hygiene instruction, plaque control, and check-up compliance, with the goal of providing complete, continual, and high-quality periodontal care to patients. The purpose of this study was to assess whether the patients receiving comprehensive periodontal treatment had better clinical outcomes than those receiving conventional periodontal treatment.

Methods: Secondary data exploration was conducted in this study. Based on NHI data, patients who had participated in the CPTP and completed the three-stage periodontal treatments between 2011 and 2012 were recruited in the experimental group (65,342 patients). The patients who had not participated in the CPTP but had received conventional periodontal treatment during the same period were selected in the control group (106,740 patients). Using the four parameters (re-treatment, endodontic therapy, surgical restoration, and tooth extraction) as prognostic indicators, we performed logistic regression analyses to evaluate whether patients in the experimental group had better clinical outcomes than those in the control group.

Results: We found that patients participating in the CPTP for 545 days had substantially lower rates of re-treatment, endodontic therapy, surgical restoration, and tooth extraction than those in the control group (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: We conclude that the patients receiving comprehensive periodontal treatment have better clinical outcomes than the patients receiving conventional periodontal treatment.