Clinical trial of oral malodour treatment in patients with periodontal diseases

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

The authors suggest that the focus for treatment for those patients with oral malodour who also have gingivitis, should be tongue hygiene. Yet for those with oral malodour and chronic periodontitis, the priority is to treat the periodontitis.

Main

Pham TAV, Ueno M et al. J Periodontal Res 2011; 46: 722–729

The aim of this study was to compare different treatment approaches for oral malodour. All subjects in this study had oral malodour and of these, 116 had gingivitis and 102 periodontitis. In this crossover design study, those with gingivitis were allocated to 1) a group that were first given instruction in tongue cleaning followed by periodontal treatment or, 2) a group that first received periodontal treatment and then tongue cleaning. A similar design was used for those subjects with periodontitis. So although the conclusions from this study would appear useful, there is no data showing that the baseline oral malodour values returned to those values before the crossover.