Endoscope-assisted subgingival scaling and root planing in the treatment of periodontitis: systematic evaluation of effects

Objective To evaluate the clinical effect of endoscopic-assisted subgingival scaling and root planning (SRP) in the treatment of periodontitis. Methods PubMed, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang Data, and VIP databases were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) related to endoscopy-assisted SRP. The search time limit was from the establishment of the database to September 15, 2021. The outcome indicators included in the study included the plaque index (PLI), probing depth (PD), attachment loss (AL), and bleeding index (BI). Review Manager 5.4 and Stata 12.0 software were used for the meta-analysis. Results A total of 111 studies were retrieved, and 5 quantitative studies were included after screening. Meta-analysis showed that for sites with 4 mm ≤ PD < 6 mm, 3 and 6 months after treatment, there was no significant difference in the PD value between the endoscope assisted group and the simple SRP group (P > 0.05); for sites with PD ≥ 6 mm, the PD value of the endoscope assisted group was smaller than that of the simple SRP group 3 and 6 months after treatment. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant (P < 0.05), but there was no significant difference in PLI, Al or BI between the two groups (P > 0.05). Conclusion Compared with simple SRP, the auxiliary use of endoscopy has a better effect on reducing PD in deep periodontal pockets (PD ≥ 6 mm). However, for clinical indicators such as PLI, AL, and BI, there was no difference between the therapeutic effects of the two methods.