Purpose: To assess the efficacy of subgingival air polishing and traditional manual scaling in 3-6 mm pockets.
Methods: Patients with chronic periodontitis who were in the maintenance phase were randomly assigned to receive subgingival air polishing (experimental group) and manual scaling (control group) in 4 teeth with probing depths of 3 to 6 mm. Clinical variables including plaque index (PI), probing depth (PD), probing on bleeding (BOP) and gingival recession (GR) were recorded at baseline, 7 and 30 days post-treatment. "Pocket closure" [PD ≤ 4 mm and BOP⁻] was also calculated as supplementary data. The data of the 2 groups were compared using paired t test with SAS 8.2 software package.
Results: Thirty-one patients were enrolled and PI was 0.8 during the study. Both treatment procedures resulted in significant reductions of PD at day 7 (P<0.0001). BOP% had significant reduction in the experimental group at day 7 (P=0.0390), but there was no significant difference compared to baseline at day 30. Meanwhile, BOP% in the control group demonstrated downward trends during the study, and significant improvement at day 30. The percentages of sites of "pocket closure" significantly increased in both groups (P=0.0329 and P=0.0035, respectively).
Conclusions: The study indicates that subgingival air polishing and traditional manual scaling are both effective for improving clinical variables during supportive periodontal therapy (SPT) in teeth with probing depths of 3 to 6 mm. But the results reveal no significant difference between the 2 modalities.