What is Periodontal Desiccation and How It Works?

Cleaning plaque biofilm—a collection of different microorganism species—is an important part of dental treatment and oral hygiene. Like any other living creature, these bacteria can evolve and adapt to external interference, making them harder to wipe out.

Considering biofilm’s complicated nature, it often requires a complex approach to be cleaned, and modern dentistry offers various more or less invasive tools for this.

Recently, scientists invented one more nonsurgical method—the so-called periodontal desiccation, which involves rapid drying of the tissue surface, which significantly slows down bacterial growth.

Let’s take a look closer at this type of dental procedure.

What is tissue desiccation?

Such an approach is not completely new in medicine—it is usually used for corneal epithelium desiccation, skin lesion treatment, and other procedures that require eradicating microbes. Once the tissue is dried, some microbe species become completely extinct in the impacted area, but some are eliminated only for a while.

Usage in dentistry

Periodontal desiccation may be used as an additional dental procedure during treatment, combined with modern tools like dental lasers, ultrasonic hand scaling, oral mouthwashes, etc. 

Drying biofilm makes removing bacteria and infected or necrotic material from the tooth surface easier, affecting them on a molecular level. Different tools are available on the market that allow periodontal desiccation, such as a special non-antibiotic gel from PerioDT. It is completely safe because it affects healthy tissues very slowly, so the dentist has enough time to remove it from unnecessary locations.  

Periodontal desiccation may become a fine addition to the common dental toolset, considering it is a non-invasive and painless procedure with minimal side effects.