The application of Periodontal Screening and Recording (PSR) in a military population

Periodontal Screening and Recording trade mark (PSR) is a diagnostic screening tool for the early detection of periodontal disease. The purposes of this study are to utilize PSR to estimate the periodontal health status of a representative military population and to compare the results with other studies of varying populations. When used to evaluate the periodontal health of a randomly-selected military population, PSR demonstrated the following: (1) males and females had a similar prevalence of being designated PSR+ (having PSR Code 3 score in two or more sextants or a PSR Code 4 score in at least one sextant), (2) Blacks and Hispanics had a similar prevalence of PSR+, and (3) both groups were twice as likely to be PSR+ as were Caucasians. Although income did not appear to be a significant predictor of PSR+, PSR+ did appear to be inversely proportional to education levels. When comparing PSR scores by sextant, the following was noted: (1) the maxillary central sextant was the most disease-free, (2) the mandibular central sextant most often presented with calculus, (3) mucogingival defects were observed more frequently in maxillary posterior sextants, and (4) the maxillary right sextant demonstrated the most destruction from periodontal disease.