ROME (ITALPRESS) – Periodontology is a fundamental branch of dentistry that deals with the health of the gums and supporting tissues of the teeth. Neglecting periodontal health can lead to diseases such as gingivitis and periodontitis, which can cause tooth loss and increase the risk of systemic problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Proper oral hygiene, regular visits to the dentist, and specific treatments can help preserve natural teeth and improve overall well-being.
The conservative dental approach “means doing what you can to save teeth when they can be saved from a standpoint of both restoring the tooth, but also when there is disease to the supporting tissues. Doing what you can doesn’t mean going overboard with treatment as well: when the tooth is to be removed, it’s to be removed. But very often teeth are removed today that are easily salvageable. And when it is possible, in medicine saving an organ is always the first choice.” This was said by Giulio Rasperini, professor of paradontology at the University of Milan and at the University of Michigan and Harvard, interviewed by Marco Klinger for Medicina Top, a TV format of the Italpress news agency.
“It is easier to extract a tooth than to do root canal therapies, so it is a super specialty of dentistry to do root canal therapies well, to do periodontics well, to do all the steps well, it would be possible to save teeth. Obviously if one takes a course of implants, takes out the tooth, puts in the implant, it’s faster.” But is it always decisive to use implants? “It’s resolving in the short term certainly, but long-term studies have actually shown that complications for both the implants and the prosthesis on top of them are frequent, and so in the long run a natural tooth recovered with treatment has the same lifespan as an implant. There are patients who are predisposed to periodontal disease and start having problems from an early age, from a very young age, so all the more reason to try to do what you can to recover the teeth. These are the patients who would be most likely to lose their implants as well.l while instead the teeth are salvageable, they are treatable with specific therapies.”
The patient “needs to look into it, be sure that there really is an indication to extract the tooth and that there is a team or at least a group of experts who can treat this patient’s specific case.” On Italian patients who go abroad to have some work done in their mouths in a short time, “I suggest to go a little cautious.”
What are so-called ‘pockets’ like and how are they dealt with in a conservative approach? “Many colleagues make the diagnosis on the radiographic image, instead it has to be done with this probe, which goes into the sulcus and measures it: if there is a pocket, it means that bacterial species are able to stay there, which causes asymptomatic inflammation, so the patient doesn’t notice it. He may have some bleeding when he brushes his teeth and he may consider that normal, but if you have bleeding gums go to the dentist. Most pockets are closed with the hygienist’s work, sometimes regenerative surgeries need to be done.”
Hygiene is key to periodontal health: manual toothbrush or electric toothbrush? “All studies have shown that the electric toothbrush is more effective in removing plaque, especially the rotoscillating one,” but if you “use the manual toothbrush perfectly fine.”
If you brush your teeth too often, on the other hand, “you cause gum recessions and ruin the tooth surface, especially if you use abrasive toothpastes and toothbrushes with bristles.” Finally, one must “try to make the patient understand the importance of quitting smoking.”
-Photo taken from video Medicine Top-
(ITALPRESS).
