What is pyorrhea?
Piorrea is a term of popular use, which evokes images of toothless mouths, wobbly teeth, dentures and disfigured smiles. For many years now, while maintaining its meaning, the pyorrhea has changed its name and consequences; we talk about periodontitis, a curable and above all preventable disease.
The pyorrhea is established following various and complicated factors. Surely bad oral hygiene is a fundamental element, but alone it is not sufficient to produce disease. The presence of tartar and plaque is in fact an extremely important risk factor, but smoke, anemia, nutritional deficiencies, systemic diseases such as diabetes and, more generally, hormonal, metabolic and immune imbalances influence this.
Piorrea: the causes
- Not good general health condition
- Organic or psychic situations that, due to the lowering of the immune defenses, alter the body's ability to fight the action and proliferation of bacteria (malnutrition, avitaminosis, diabetes, anorexia, drug use, AIDS).
- The lack or lack of proper and regular cleaning of the teeth.
- Inconstancy in periodic checks and regular hygiene sessions at the dentist or hygienist.
The smoke. Tartar.
- Malformed or inadequate dental work: fillings, crowns, bridges.
- Crooked teeth (crowding and poorly positioned teeth).
- Anatomical situations that make correct oral hygiene difficult (for example: wisdom teeth).
Piorrea: early symptoms
- Bad breath
- Generally there is no pain
- Slight bleeding of the gums with brushing (or for other modest stimuli such as chewing hard foods).
- Strange taste in the mouth and change in color (redness), consistency (softening) or shape (swelling) of the gums.
Piorrea: late symptoms
- Severe bleeding
- Marked halitosis
- Gingival recessions with root exposure
- Spaces appear between the teeth
- Excessive tooth mobility
- Slight discomfort up to the diffuse pain of the teeth.
Everything, however, is generally referred to a bad oral hygiene, which therefore represents the primum movens of the pyorrhea. In fact, in the absence of adequate cleaning of the teeth, the germs accumulate on the tooth surfaces, with the formation of plaque, which slowly evolves into tartar; toxins, enzymes and metabolites produced by these bacteria thus penetrate the gums, triggering an inflammatory process. The gum then becomes painful, appears swollen and reddened, soft to the touch, and bleeds easily. At this point if plaque and tartar are removed, the inflamed tissue is restored to normal thanks to the targeted intervention of the dentist. Conversely, there is a slow but inexorable gingival retraction, with the formation of so-called pockets. Later the bone is also attacked, with the formation of local abscesses, faltering and displaced teeth, and deeper pockets, until the inexorable spontaneous fall of the tooth. These phases have a very slow course and are often not painful: for this reason, we tend to notice the pyorrhea too late, making it necessary to have demanding and rather expensive interventions.
Treatment
Fortunately, the dentures, which for a long time remained the only and inevitable solution, nowadays appear to be an increasingly distant memory; the dentist can indeed intervene successfully through periodontal plastic surgery, for example by reconstructing the gingiva through grafts, regenerating the bone with goretex membranes or, in irrecoverable cases, implanting new teeth on titanium screws fixed in the bone. As with all pathologies, prevention is better than cure, especially when it comes to situations that have a negative biological, psychological and economic impact, such as pyorrhea. Although the name has changed, adequate and proper oral hygiene at home, supported by dental check-ups every 6 months, remains the best weapon for pyorrhea prevention.
