The Evidence-based Periodontal Risk Assessment (PRA) Tool for Nonsurgical Periodontal Therapy in a Comprehensive Periodontal Management by Risk Assessment (PEMBRA)

Abstract

In the management of periodontitis patients, periodontal risk assessment (PRA) tool is currently being applied during periodontal review (PR). However, an assessment of risk profiles during examination and diagnosis (E&D) may and would effectively assess and diagnose patients’ periodontal conditions, provide personalised treatment planning, and render an enhanced patient care through periodontal management by risk assessment (PEMBRA). From a retrospective study on selected records of 81 patients treated for chronic periodontitis, the PRA profiles of the patients were evaluated during E&D and two to three months after completion of nonsurgical periodontal therapy (NSPT) during PR. The results were analysed using SPSS version 24 for descriptive statistics. On E&D, the patients presented with 25.9% localised and 74.1% generalised chronic periodontitis. Of these, 2.5% of low-risk patients on E&D increased to 21% during PR signifying an improvement after the treatment. However, the medium-risk patients have a slight increase from 32% to 35%, and patients with a high risk of 62% were reduced to 43%. The improvement of the risk profiles for both low and high-risk groups was mostly contributed by the reduction in the plaque score, percentages of bleeding on probing (BOP), and probing pocket depth (PPD) ≥ 5 mm. This evidence-based evaluation of PRA tool during E&D and PR is important for PEMBRA as it encouraged the clinicians to adopt periodontal management through basic periodontal examination, detailed periodontal charting, radiographic interpretation, tooth per tooth prognosis, diagnosis, and targeted NSPT.