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Dannewitz B, Zeidler A et al. J Clin Periodontol 2016; 43: 53–62

The investigators conclude that the molar teeth selected in this retrospective study, despite over half having furcation involvement, could be maintained for more than 10 years (mean survival time for molars with furcation involvement of Grade III through-and-through, was 11.8 years). Both a non-surgical and surgical approach was adopted. It was noted that patients who presented with aggressive periodontitis were less likely to lose their teeth, in contrast to those few patient with diabetes. A possible explanation for these findings could be treatment bias. The investigators used, multilevel Cox-regression analysis to look for associations between a range of different variables and molar tooth extractions in 136 patients (1,015 molar teeth at baseline). In addition, hazard ratios were calculated (instantaneous risk comparing one group and another, whereas relative risk is a culmative value). The hazard ratio for age was (HR 1.57, p = 0.01), for female gender (HR 1.99, p = 0.035), for smoking (HR 1.97, p = 0.034), and for diabetes mellitus was (HR 5.25, p = 0.021).