A clinical survey of periodontal conditions in Greece

Abstract The present study used full-mouth clinical assessments of plaque, calculus, bleeding on probing, probing pocket depth and probing attachment level to evaluate the periodontal conditions in a rural (A) and an urban (B) sample of 25–64 year old Greek adults, comprising 190 and 373 subjects, respectively. 13% of the subjects in sample (A) and 8% in sample (B) were edentulous, while mean values of teeth present in the four age cohorts ranged between 19.8—12.6 and 23.3—18.3. respectively. A poor level of oral hygiene was recorded in both samples with high plaque, calculus and bleeding scores. Deep pocketing was more pronounced in the rural than in the urban sample: between 1.7 and 8.0% of all sites probed showed a PPD of ≥6 mm and between 20 and 51.2% of the subjects in each age cohort had at least one deep pocket. Corresponding figures for the urban sample was 0.6-4.7% and 15.1-49.2%. However, the prevalence of severe attachment loss was of comparable magnitude in both samples: between 2.8–25.7% of the sites in sample (A) and 2.8–20.6% in sample (B) displayed a PAL of ≥6 mm, while 32.5-72.1% and 31.8-73.8% of the subjects, respectively, had at least one severely affected site. It was further found that the distribution of advanced disease in the samples was skewed; 14.4% of the subjects in sample (A) and 9.5% in sample (B) accounted for 75%, of all deep pockets, while 21.8 and 19.4% of the subjects, respectively, accounted for 75% of all sites with PAL of ≥6 mm. Multiple regression revealed that male sex and high plaque and bleeding scores had a significant, positive influence to the amount of attachment loss on a subject level.