Search

Dental caries and restorations in proximal tooth surfaces often impinge upon the periodontal biological health.This study examines whether these factors may contribute to risk for alveolar bone loss.Approximal tooth surfaces of 96 teeth in 40 patients were evaluated on panoramic radiographs for alveolar bone loss, restorations and caries.Higher values of alveolar bone loss were observed in molars and on the right side of patients. Where a caries/restorative event had occurred in the inter-proximal tooth surface bone loss at the corresponding teeth was approximately twice more than in the omologous non-treated tooth. Increased number of furcations was also observed in molars with caries/restorations.Site-specific periodontal bone loss due to dental caries or restorative events occurs in adults.

Generally, the routine clinical and radiographic examination in periodontology are nor enough for establishing a global and individual diagnosis that allow to establish the exact location of alveolar bone loss, their type (vertical or horizontal) as well as the presence of furcation involvement. In the six clinical cases explored with the dental CT it was possible to appreciate the alveolar bone quality (in Hounsfield units), the tridimensional morphology of intrabony defects, the number of vertical bone walls, as well as the architecture of the furcation defects. This dental CT examination is very close to the results obtained during periodontal surgery. However, this fact has permitted for four patients, from the beginning and not intraoperatively, the choice of the regenerative therapeutic procedure in the case of eight intrabony lesions as well as the extraction of three molars with Class II furcations associated with deep periodontal pockets. For the last two patients there were not obtained with the CT exam any more data.The CT exam that uses the Dental CT program allows the dental practitioner to obtain important data in cases with complexes infrabony pockets.