The supporting tissue around the tooth is crucial for oral health and tooth stability. Its disruption can not only lead to the loss of a healthy tooth, but also cause serious systemic diseases.
This is a branch of dentistry that studies the tissues located around the tooth and related pathologies. Periodontology thus deals with all the soft tissues (the periodontal ligament and gingiva) and hard tissues (cementum and alveolar bone tissue) that surround the tooth and ensure, when healthy, its stability in the alveolar bone.
The disease affecting the periodontium is generically called periodontal disease (or pyorrhoea).
It should be remembered that the same type of problem can also affect implants (peri-implantitis), which for anatomical reasons are much more susceptible to this type of pathology. Adequate management of oral hygiene at home and at dental practice is therefore also indispensable to ensure the maintenance of implants over time, which, even if they cannot be decayed, can easily be lost if not properly managed.
Non-surgical periodontal therapy
The recent therapeutic indications of the American Academy of Periodontology for initial periodontitis are in favour of a minimally invasive, and therefore non-surgical, treatment, which consists of thorough oral hygiene with ultrasound (to eliminate supragingival tartar), followed by root planing, carried out manually with special instruments called curettes (scaling and root planing) that have the task of removing tartar and bacterial toxins from the root surface.
Today, there are many ultrasound machines which, by exploiting different mechanisms of action, can really decontaminate the gingival pocket in depth, decreasing the depth of the pocket itself as well as the pain often linked to an inflammatory state of the periodontium.
It must be remembered that the innervation of the periodontium is the same as that of the tooth, so even when the patient feels a lot of pain, it is not necessarily related to the tooth or to a caries, but may in fact much more often derive from a gingival problem.
Resective periodontal surgery
This is a technique that allows the reshaping of the alveolar bone around the teeth, eliminating all the bony irregularities that generate alterations in gingival morphology, (commonly called periodontal pockets), which are the cause of bacterial proliferation and therefore periodontal inflammation. With resective surgery, it is possible to permanently remove those periodontal pockets that are too deep to be reached normally with non-surgical techniques. The elimination of bone and gum tissue abnormalities, together with home hygiene and routine professional check-ups, makes it possible to prevent the inflammatory state and subsequent tissue resorption, safeguarding the stability of the dental elements.
Regenerative periodontal surgery
Today, new regenerative techniques allow the predictable regeneration of bone tissue lost due to periodontal disease through the use of membranes, biomaterials or chemicals that facilitate the formation of new bone tissue. With these procedures and in appropriately selected situations, restoration of the pre-disease bone state can be achieved.
Soft tissue Surgery and graft
Retraction of gingival tissue gradually exposes tooth roots, increasing sensitivity and susceptibility to root caries. In order to restore normal muco-gingival relationships, reconstruction of the gingival tissue is performed using micro-invasive surgery that restores dental health and stability with important aesthetic results.
