Insufficient evidence of effect of periodontal treatment on prevention or management of cardiovascular disease.

DATA SOURCES: The Cochrane Oral Health Group's Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Medline, Embase, CINAHL, OpenGrey, the Chinese BioMedical Literature Database, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure and the VIP database, the US National Institutes of Health Trials Register, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Clinical Trials Registry Platform and Sciencepaper Online databases were searched with no restrictions on language or date.

STUDY SELECTION: Two reviewers independently selected studies and only randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs with follow-up times ≥ one year were considered.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Data extraction and risk of bias assessment were carried out independently and in duplicate. Standard Cochrane methodological approaches were used.

RESULTS

Only one trial involving 303 patients that compared scaling and root andomiz (SRP) with community care was included. It was considered to be at high risk of bias. No data on deaths (all-cause or CVD-related) were reported. There was insufficient evidence to determine the effect of SRP and community care in reducing the risk of CVD recurrence in patients with chronic periodontitis (risk ratio (RR) 0.72; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.23 to 2.22; very low quality evidence). The effects of SRP compared with community care on high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) (mean difference (MD) 0.62; -1.45 to 2.69), the number of patients with high hs-CRP (RR 0.77; 95% CI 0.32 to 1.85) and adverse events (RR 9.06; 95% CI 0.49 to 166.82) were also not statistically significant. The study did not assess modifiable cardiovascular risk factors, other blood test results, heart function parameters or revascularisation procedures.

CONCLUSIONS

We found very low quality evidence that was insufficient to support or refute whether periodontal therapy can prevent the recurrence of CVD in the long term in patients with chronic periodontitis. No evidence on primary prevention was found.