Tobacco use and dental disease

The previously cited Indiana University School of Dentistry teaching monograph, "The Impact of Tobacco Use and Cessation on Nonmalignant and Precancerous Oral and Dental Diseases and Conditions," reviewed over 800 articles and concluded that tobacco use is strongly associated with many dental and oral mucosal diseases, and may contribute to others. Our study of a relatively small sample of 200 patients, of whom 33 percent were tobacco users, found statistically significant data correlating tobacco use with a higher Decayed, Missing and Filled Index (a measurement of caries and tooth loss experience of patients) and relating periodontal bone loss to smokeless tobacco use. And, while this investigation did not find a statistically significant correlation between smoking and periodontitis severity, there was a data trend in that direction. Conclusions about tooth loss in the Indiana monograph were limited to smokers; however, there was an association of ST use with gingival recession, which can become quite severe in the area in which the smokeless tobacco is placed. It might be theorized that the significantly larger number of missing teeth among ST users in our study is associated with the generally poor oral hygiene and less sophisticated outlook on health care that tobacco users often display. Indeed, of the 65 denture wearers in our study, 7.7 percent were ST users and 40.0 percent were tobacco users of some type. In view of the large amount of data in the scientific literature associating tobacco with dental diseases as summarized by the Indiana monograph, and the position of several groups such as the American Cancer Society that tobacco is one of the risk factors most associated with intraoral cancer, it would appear that dentists have a vested professional interest in promoting tobacco use cessation among their patients. Dentists should take every reasonable opportunity to persuade patients to discontinue the tobacco habit, thus preventing life-threatening malignancies as well as dental diseases.