Evaluation of gingival bleeding following 4 types of periodontal therapy

This study evaluated the effects of 4 types of periodontal therapy (coronal scaling (CS), root planning (RP), modified Widman surgery (MW), and flap with osseous resectional surgery (FO] and subsequent maintenance care upon bleeding on probing (BOP). 75 individuals completed split mouth therapy and 2 years of maintenance followup. Data were obtained by 1 calibrated examiner prior to the initiation of therapy, following the hygienic phase and surgical phase of active therapy and yearly during maintenance care. All types of therapy reduced the prevalence of BOP. At the end of 2 years of maintenance therapy, regions greater than 5 mm treated by CS demonstrated a significantly (p less than 0.05) greater prevalence of BOP sites than regions treated by the other modalities. Generally, sites associated with deeper probing depths exhibited a greater tendency to bleed and sites with associated plaque accumulation bled more frequently. RP resulted in a significantly (p less than 0.05) higher % of bleeding sites that stopped following active therapy than did CS. Throughout the study, BOP was extremely dynamic, with 15-88% of sites converting to a new status between any 2 examination periods. This dynamic nature may explain the inability of previous investigations to establish BOP as a reliable predictor of periodontal breakdown.