Fast Facts: Perio Edition Episode 52
[Andrew Johnston, RDH]
Welcome back everyone! You are listening to another episode of Fast Facts- Perio Edition brought to you by A Tale of Two Hygienists in partnership with DentistRX. And now, please welcome your host, Katrina Sanders.
[Katrina Sanders, RDH]
Hello, and welcome to Fast Facts: Perio Edition. Okay, you guys, let’s unpack this, shall we? This new aspect coming down from the AAP discussing the grade of periodontitis. Now, this is new for us, or at least it feels new for us. However, I think many of us can agree that in the past we looked at things like grade as incorporated into how we classified our patients. For example, we would use terminology like “aggressive periodontitis”, because that was our best way of clarifying that for whatever reason, this patient just feels like they have far more clinical attachment loss than they should.
And this is, in my opinion, what created some of the confusion around how to integrate the appropriate case types for patients. So, as we discussed in weeks prior, staging allows us the opportunity to identify specifically the severity of the disease process. How severe is it? Stage one, stage two, stage three, or stage four? Grading allows us the opportunity to take a look at what we understand with regards to various types of recognized risk factors and how those risk factors play a role in the complexity of this disease process. Again, I want to be very clear, we acknowledge that periodontal disease is a relatively complex and multifactorial disease process, and so the grading system allows us the opportunity to better identify a few pieces with regards to our patients. Number one, when we grade our patients, it allows us the ability to identify how these risk factors that our patient is presenting with may manifest themselves for the patient. We can also predictably measure a response to standard therapy, and if a patient is considered an advanced grade of the disease process, we may predict that these patients that are in advanced grade may not respond as favorably to the disease treatment.
Finally, grading allows us the opportunity to consider how advanced this patient’s periodontal disease may be and subsequently how that disease process may have a dramatic impact on their overall medical or systemic observation. So grading allows us the opportunity to integrate all pieces for our patient, not just how quickly that radiologic bone loss has moved, but even more so, what do our patient’s unique risk factors mean when it comes to the progression and response as well as systemic acquisition of this disease process? Stay tuned. Next week, we’re going to start looking at some of the parameters that the AAP has specifically identified with regards to grade A, grade B and grade C of Periodontitis.
This has been another episode of Fast Facts – Perio Edition with Katrina Sanders, RDH. Please feel free to reach me on Instagram @thedentalwinegenist or on my website www.KatrinaSanders.com Cheers.
[Andrew Johnston, RDH]
Thank you for listening to another episode of Fast Facts – Perio Edition, brought to you in part by DentistRX makers of the InteliSonic line of power brushes. Find out more by visiting their website at www.dentistrx.com. We’ll see you next week for another Fast Fact!
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