Background: Evaluating the health status of the gingival tissue represents an important objective in the dental daily practice. Inflammation changes the microcirculatory and micromorphological dynamics of human gingiva which cannot always be determined by clinical examination and which may lead to unpleasant complications if not treated at the right moment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the microcirculation in subjects with gingivitis compared to healthy gingiva by using laser Doppler flowmetry. Material and
Methods: Recordings of the gingival microcirculation were taken from 20 healthy gingival sites and from 20 sites with moderate gingivitis. Four consecutive determinations of the GM were registered for each site, as follows: before the initial therapy, at 24 hours, after 7 days and after 14 days from the initial therapy. All patients received initial therapy, including oral hygiene instructions. The gingival blood flows in the gingivitis group before treatment was significantly different from those in the healthy gingiva group. After 14 days flows were restored to the same level as the healthy gingiva, with no significant difference (P > 0.01). Signals were recorded with the aid of a laser Doppler MoorLab instrument VMS-LDF2 probe VP3 10 mm S N 2482, held in place with a silicon impression. The data were processed using the statistical analysis software SPSS v16.0.1.
Results: The results showed statistically significant differences among the GM values recorded before and after the initial therapy for the gingivitis sites.
Conclusions: LDF could be a useful, noninvasive, sensitive, reproducible, and harmless method for measuring gingival blood flow in humans. Abbreviations: GBF = gingival blood flow, GM = gingival microcirculation, Hours = h, Laser Doppler flow readings = LDFRs, LDF = laser Doppler flowmetry
Full text sources
