Are cardiac transplant patients more likely to have periodontitis? A case record study.

In several large epidemiological studies chronic periodontitis has been implicated as an additional risk factor, independent of other risk factors, for the development of ischaemic heart disease. The underlying mechanism is thought to be a localised infection giving rise to an inflammatory host response, and some experimental data agree with this hypothesis. Recently, however, some studies have questioned the post dated relationship between the two diseases. The current case-record study was undertaken to evaluate the prevalence of chronic periodontitis and the severity of such periodontal disease in a heart transplant population, assuming the latter represented a relatively severely compromised cardiovascular patient population. The study demonstrated that 76% of the patients had various degrees of periodontal disease prior to undergoing a heart transplant. Thus, it is possible that a relationship between cardiovascular disease and periodontal disease exists, but further, large intervention studies will be needed to confirm such a conclusion.