Influence of periodontal disease on systemic disease: inversion of a paradigm: a review

Medicine and dentistry interface at many levels. For example, the focal infection theory, popular at the outset of the 1900s, suggested that systemic ailments could be traced to dental infections, which, in those days, were common, chronic, and often untreated. With the advent of modern dental and medical treatment, particularly antibiotics, this relationship was largely forgotten. Until recently, the discovery of relationships between periodontal disease and heart ailments, maternal oral health and prematurity of offspring, bidirectional interrelationships between diabetes and periodontal diseases, relationship of oral infections and chronic respiratory diseases and relationship between skeletal and oral bone mineral density, has brought a shift in the perspective. Research is now focused on the potential impact of periodontal diseases on systemic health. Thus, the impact of oral infection in systemic health defined a novel branch in Periodontology termed Periodontal medicine.