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See you in three months! The rationale for the three monthly periodontal recall interval: a risk based approach
I N B R I E F
Outlines the relevance of making recall plans individual to a patients needs and recognising the importance of compliance with these regimens.
Provides an understanding of the importance of risk assessment of periodontal disease progression.
Enables an understanding of the concept of supportive periodontal therapy and the integration of SPT with risk assessments.
GENERAL
J. Darcey1 and M. Ashley2
VERIFIABLE CPD PAPER
These are so often the parting words as a patient leaves the dental surgery after a course of periodontal treatment: When would you like to see me again? It is then that the clinical auto-pilot engages and a gure is reeled off: Three months Mrs Jones. Years of education and clinical experience allow rapid processing of the information and we calculate a date. Yet how? There is now a rm body of evidence supporting the prescription of recall intervals based upon caries risk but when it comes to periodontal disease and its follow up the literature becomes more sparse.
It is widely accepted that when a patient with chronic periodontitis has come to the end of a period of active periodontal treatment they should enter a maintenance phase. The purpose of this is to allow the periodontal tissues to heal and for the clinical team to provide the appropriate support for the patient. Without such vigilance it is likely that the patient will not achieve an adequate standard of daily dental hygiene and the tissues will become re-infected with dental plaque. This may
There is signicant evidence to support the regular review of patients with chronic periodontitis. There is, however, comparatively little evidence to demonstrate how often such reviews should take place. This paper looks at the periodontal healing period, the risks of periodontal progression and current thinking about maintenance programmes. It thus attempts to establish some guidelines that practitioners may use when calculating recall intervals. Clinical relevance The choice of individual, patient-focused recall intervals is essential to limit disease progression and maintain healthy periodontal tissues.
Thus such combinations of active periodontal therapy, oral hygiene advice and regular follow up have increasingly demonstrated improvements in periodontal health.5-7 Thus we...