Improvement of periodontal parameters in untreated quadrants after surgical periodontal therapy at adjacent quadrants.

BACKGROUND Once full-mouth surgery is planned following the non-surgical phase for a patient with chronic periodontitis, it often does not undergo revision during the surgical period. The aim of this study was to find out whether surgical treatments performed on each quadrant would have any influence on the periodontal status of the untreated quadrants. METHODS Twenty patients with chronic periodontitis were selected and received full-mouth scaling and root planing. After 8 weeks, quadrant-wise surgery was performed during four consecutive sessions at 2-week intervals for sites with probing depth (PD) > or = 5 mm and bleeding on probing (BOP). Clinical parameters, including PD, BOP, and clinical attachment level, were recorded at baseline, at each session prior to surgery, and 8 weeks after the last surgical visit. RESULTS Only the data recorded for the last-treated quadrant are presented in this article. Marked differences were found in the clinical measurements of the last-treated quadrant among all visits. A significant improvement in the clinical parameters of the last-treated quadrant between sessions two and five were mostly related to the treatment of the other three quadrants. CONCLUSION The treatment plan made at the time of reassessment of the initial phase of therapy should be considered provisional, and it should be open to revision prior to each surgical visit to reconfirm or modify the treatment plan previously devised for the remaining quadrant(s).