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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Oral. Health

Sec. Oral Health Promotion

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/froh.2025.1568252

The efficacy of telephone follow-up frequencies on clinical parameters post non-surgical periodontal therapy: a randomized controlled trial

Provisionally accepted
  • The First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objectives: This randomized controlled trial aimed to investigate the impact of different telephone follow-up frequencies on periodontal clinical parameters after non-surgical periodontal therapy. Materials and methods: Patients with Stage II-IV periodontitis were enrolled and randomly assigned to high-frequency (once every 2 weeks), medium-frequency (once a month), and low-frequency (once in 3 months) follow-up groups. All patients received standard non-surgical periodontal treatment. The full mouth probing depth (PD), clinical attachment loss (CAL), gingival index (GI), and plaque index (PI) were evaluated at baseline, after treatment (T1) and post treatment 3 months (T2). Results: From T1 to T2, the high-frequency follow-up group had significant reduced in PD (p = 0.03), improved in GI (p = 0.04) and PI (p = 0.03) compared with the medium and low-frequency groups. There was no significant difference in PD, GI, and PI between the medium-frequency group and the low-frequency group. No statistical difference was found in CAL among the three groups. Conclusion: More frequent telephone follow-up helps maintain and enhance non-surgical periodontal therapy effects.

    Keywords: Periodontitis, telephone follow-up, non-surgical periodontal therapy, Periodontal parameters, randomized controlled trial

    Received: 06 Feb 2025; Accepted: 27 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 He, Tang, Liao, Hu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Ruoyi Liao, The First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
    Chun Hu, The First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
    Hongyu Liu, The First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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