The Journal of

Introduction: Supportive periodontal treatment prevents the progress and recurrence of periodontal disease in patients previously diagnosed and treated for periodontitis, decreases tooth loss and increases the possibility for treating other diseases or conditions resulting from oral pathologies. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the frequency of patients' returns for gingival check-up after periodontal surgery at a private periodontist office in Yazd.

Methods: 365 files of the patients who had received periodontal surgery between 1996 and 2005 were randomly selected. The frequency of the patients' return to the office for periodontal check-up and their demographic features were recorded in a checklist. The study data was analyzed via SPSS software (ver,16) using descriptive statistics.

Results: The patients' files belonged to 205 females (57.6%) and 151 males (42.4%). The patients’ age ranged between 14-67 years with an average of 37.8 + 9.48 years. 281 patients (93.70%) had never returned for gingival check-up after the periodontal surgery. 42 patients (11.79%) had only returned once and 22 patients (6.7%) had returned twice after the periodontal surgery. Only 1.68% of patients had returned more than three times. No significant relationship was observed between the patients' return after periodontal surgery and their age, sex, education level and occupation.

Conclusion: Despite the importance of supportive treatment after the periodontal surgery, more than 90% of the patients never returned for the supporting treatment. Therefore, periodontitis needs to be emphasized for the patients to regularly return for periodontal check-up after periodontal surgery to maintain the results, and prevent the disease recurrence.