Impact of stress on clinical outcomes of non-surgical periodontal therapy in patients with severe generalized periodontitis

Relevance. Aim – to assess the impact of psychosocial stress on the clinical outcomes in severe periodontitis patients treated with Nonsurgical Periodontal Therapy (NPT). Materials and methods. Patients received 2 psychological questionnaires to score their stress levels, while clinical data were obtained 1 week before and six weeks after the completion of NPT. Results. A total of 55 patients were consecutively included in the study and subsequently categorized into different stress levels (low stress level n = 22 and moderate/high stress level n = 33). All clinical parameters were found to be comparable at baseline between groups. While reduction in full-mouth bleeding scores was found to be statistically significantly lower in group with higher stress levels, a similar improvement in the other clinical parameters was observed at the completion of NPT. Conclusion. Psychosocial stress seems to influence negatively the results of NPT and highly stressed patients may represent a risk category for disease progression.