Retreatment in periodontal practice

Periodontal disease has a greater or lesser tendency to recur. The therapist controls rather than cures the condition. Careful maintenance is as important as skillful original treatment if periodontal health is to be maintained. At the time of the original treatment, every patient should be informed that retreatment of some type is occasionally necessary. Patients with recurrence of disease should be treated as conservatively as possible and every effort should be made to find the cause of failure. Surgical retreatment should be done only after a reasonable effort has been made to improve the situation by other means. The deepened crevice that does not bleed when probed and is not accompanied by bone loss does not provide justification for surgical retreatment. This report has reviewed some of the reasons for treatment failures and has presented a philosophy for their management.