Abstract
BackgroundScientific studies in dentistry are mainly conducted at universities. However, most patients are treated in dental practices, which differ in many ways from treatment at the university. Through the establishment of practice-based research networks, however, it is also possible to examine studies in a real-world setting in dental practices. For this reason the aim of this non-interventional, observational study was to develop and evaluate a digital procedure to access, extract and analyse recorded clinical data in practices to assess periodontal treatment outcomes.MethodsParticipating periodontists were former or active postgraduate students of a master’s course in periodontics in Freiburg who routinely used a digital periodontal diagnostic program. All available stored periodontal patient charts were extracted, anonymized and digitally sent to the study centre.ResultsIn this study, data were collected from 6301 patients from 9 different practices. Information such as probing depth (PD), bleeding on probing (BOP), mobility, furcation and gingival attachment for 153,163 teeth at first visit were successfully transferred to the study centre. During the average observational period of 9.77 years, only 2.8% of all teeth were lost. The number of visits was significantly negatively correlated with BOP (p < 0.0001), and the number of BOP-positive sites was significantly correlated with deeper PDs (p < 0.001).ConclusionThe presented procedure was able to gather a large amount of practice-based periodontal data, and thus this study may support practice-based research networks. The data indicate that systematic and supportive periodontal therapy is successful on a practice-based level.Trial registration The study was internationally registered on 4 January 2017 in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS 00011448). https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00011448
Highlights
IntroductionMost patients are treated in dental practices, which differ in many ways from treatment at the university
Scientific studies in dentistry are mainly conducted at universities
The aim of this study was to develop a procedure to digitally extract periodontal data from specialized periodontal practices to support the concept of digital extraction of data, analyse the collected data of treatment outcomes, and compare the findings with current literature
Summary
Most patients are treated in dental practices, which differ in many ways from treatment at the university. Through the establishment of practicebased research networks, it is possible to examine studies in a real-world setting in dental practices. For this reason the aim of this non-interventional, observational study was to develop and evaluate a digital procedure to access, extract and analyse recorded clinical data in practices to assess periodontal treatment outcomes. To understand the difference in treatment between an academic setting and private practice, the idea of practice-based research networks (PBRNs) was introduced in the US in the early 1970s [4]. Improved communication between practice and research may lead to better patient care [5,6,7]
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