Questionnaire-based community periodontal susceptibility screening index

Abstract

Periodontal diseases are major causes of tooth loss and contribute to significant morbidity and healthcare costs. Therefore, identifying areas that deliver substantial returns with community-based preventive programs are a dire necessity. Planning and implementing preventive measures in periodontal oral care require identification of not only a population with current disease burden, but also of future susceptibility to disease. All major periodontal indices that have been used in community periodontal surveys are designed to identify either severity, prevalence, or treatment needs of periodontal diseases. No known index exists based on scientifically proven risk factors of periodontal disease to identify population susceptible to the disease, and to determine the need for preventive planning and interventions. In this article, a simple questionnaire-based index has been proposed to identify both individual and community susceptibility to periodontal disease.