Subgingival airpolishing: A simple and cost effective medical insurance

The treatment of periodontitis necessitates thorough removal of bacterial biofilm during the initial therapy andperiodontal maintenance phase. However debridement using hand instruments and/ or oscillating scalers is both technically demanding, time consuming, may lead to severe root damage over time and also may cause ulceration of the oral gingival epithelium which allows oral biofilm microbiota to reach the blood stream.Subgingival air polishing has been introduced as a novel approach to removal of biofilm as it causes minimal trauma to the hard and soft tissues. Light micrography studies have shown that with some air polishing powders there is discernible erosion of the oral gingival epithelium with exposure of underlying connective tissue. This inflammation along with the concentrated aerosol micro-environment of the gingival sulcus causes systemic dissemination of the oral biofilm microbiota. Recent developments in subgingival air polishing powders have improved upon their previous drawbacks as with causing no epithelial damage in addition to being antiinflammatory,immunomodualatory and cytoprotective. The introduction of new aerosol reduction devices have resulted in the generation of significantly fewer mean quantity of colony forming units which becomes pertinent in the present scenario of rising cases of peri-implant diseases. The focus of this review article is to discuss the significance of subgingival air polishing as a simple and cost effective medical insurance.