Risk factors for periodontal disease

Risk factors play an important role in an individual's response to periodontal infection. Identification of these risk factors helps to target patients for prevention and treatment, with modification of risk factors critical to the control of periodontal disease. Shifts in our understanding of periodontal disease prevalence, and advances in scientific methodology and statistical analysis in the last few decades, have allowed identification of several major systemic risk factors for periodontal disease. The first change in our thinking was the understanding that periodontal disease is not universal, but that severe forms are found only in a portion of the adult population who show abnormal susceptibility.…