Proposal #01-03

"Clinical and Microbial Evaluation of Perioscopy on Localized Chronic Periodontitis Patients"

ABSTRACT
This study is designed to evaluate the clinical and microbial changes when nonresponsive sites are scaled by traditional methods and when Perioscopy is used for treatment in chronic periodontitis patients. The sample size will consist of approximately 20 patients who exhibit localized chronic periodontitis and who have been routinely seen for periodontal maintenance every 3 months. However, patients recruited for this study will still exhibit localized sites of inflammation and pocketing that have not responded to non-surgical periodontal therapy. The study design is a within patient match site design. Each patient will have 2-8 sites identified whose pockets are > 6mm. Half the sites within each patient will be treated with scaling and root planing plus Perioscopy (experimental group) and the other half of sites will have scaling and root planing performed only and serve as the control group. Periodontal pockets of > 6mm will be used in this study. The primary outcomes are reductions in pocket depth and Porphyrorronas Gingivalis in plaque samples. Explanatory variables are time and site specific measures which include plaque index, calculus, GCF, and CAL. This design provides doubly repeated measures where repeated measures are represented by time and site within patient, with site specific confounders. Data will be analyzed with generalized linear models that deal with correlated data which are created by the repeated measures. Results of the study will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of Perioscopy for non-surgical periodontal therapy in chronic periodontitis patients.