Relationship between tooth loss/probing depth and systemic disorders in periodontal patients

During the last decades, many published studies have focused on the associations between periodontal disease and different systemic disorders. The purpose of the present investigation was to study the relationship between occurrence of systemic disorders and the two variables mean number of teeth and periodontal probing pocket depth after stratification according to smoking habits. The study was conducted as a retrospective study based on consecutive selection of patients at a specialist clinic of Periodontology. The study population consisted of 1854 individuals. Of these, 797 were males, and 1057 were females. Multiple regression analyses were adopted in order to calculate the partial correlations between the number of remaining teeth/the relative frequency of periodontal probing depths > or = 5 mm and presence of systemic disease for different strata according to sex and smoking habits with age included as an independent variable. Non-smoking men with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and rheumatoid disease had significantly fewer teeth compared to non-smoking men without systemic disorder. In conclusion, cardio-vascular disease, diabetes and rheumatoid disease may be regarded as risk indicators of tooth loss in men. However, in order to investigate hypotheses concerning potential risk factors, emerging from cross-sectional studies, being true risk factors of tooth loss, longitudinal prospective studies including established risk factors along with new exposures of interest as covariates are required.