Abstract 17704: The Association of Tooth Scaling and Decreased Cardiovascular Disease -A Nationwide Population-Based Study

Abstract

Background: Poor oral hygiene has been associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease frequent tooth brushing has been reported to decrease the risk for CVD recently. However, the association between preventive dentistry and cardiovascular risk reduction remained undetermined. The aim of this study is investigate the effect of mouth scaling on cardiovascular disease and stroke risk, using a nationwide, population-based study and a retrospective cohort design. Methods: 51108 adult subjects without previous history of stroke or myocardial infarction (MI) who had received full or partial mouth scaling at least once were rerolled from the Taiwan National Health insurance. Another 51512 age-, gender-, and cormobidities-matched subjects without history of stroke or MI and did not receive mouth scaling comprised the comparison control. Cox proportional hazard regressions were performed as a means of comparing the cardiovascular events rate between these two cohorts. Results: During an average follow-up period of 7 years, a total of 102,620 patients were enrolled, of which 51,108 patients who had ever received tooth mouth scaling had lower incidence of acute MI and stroke when compared to the control group (0.55% vs. 0.44%, p=0,013 and 2.57% vs. 2.27%, p=0.002, respectively). The log-rank test and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that patients with tooth scaling have significantly higher AMI- free and higher stroke-free survival rates ( p =0.027 and p= 0.04 respectively). Cox proportional hazard regression model analysis showed that tooth scaling was the independent factor associated with less risk of developing future MI (Hazard Ratio, HR, 0.76, 95% CI, 0.60-0.96; p =0.021) and stroke (HR 0.87, 95% CI, 0.78-0.96; p =0.007). Furthermore, the frequency of tooth scaling correlated with the risk reduction of MI with HR of 0.76 (95% CI, 0.60-0.96; p =0.021) and HR of 0.87 (95% CI, 0.71-1.07; p= 0.188), comparing often and occasional with never tooth scaling, respectively; stroke with HR 0.87, (95% CI, 0.78-0.96; p =0.007) and HR of 0.91 (95% CI, 0.83-1.00; p =0.045), comparing often and occasional with never tooth scaling, respectively. Conclusions: Tooth scaling was associated with decreased risk for cardiovascular risk and stroke.