Periodontics

I had the unique experience the other day of having a meeting with the periodontal group that we do most of our referrals with. Capitol Periodontal Group came by the office for a meet and greet. Most of the senior members of that group which I have been working with for the last 40 years have retired. Dr. Angel, Dr. Roberts, Dr. Hogan were some of the original owners. The 2^nd generation,Dr. Lane and Dr. Berrin have retired leading me to the 3^rd generation of seniors in the practice. Dr. Towfighi and Dr. Pretel. I had not had the opportunity to meet several of the younger members of their group (the 4th generation), so Dr. Towfighi said he would bring over some of the members to my office for lunch. I was shocked when everyone came. There was a group of 10 of us all sitting around talking about the differences of the new procedures in Periodontics. One of the topics was the new LANAP procedure which stands for Laser Assisted New Attachment Procedure. They reviewed the procedure with me and as one of the comments that I heard was that it is the “Holy Grail of periodontics” because it actually allows new bone to generate and new gum tissue to generate around infected and periodontally diseased teeth. This puts into question one of my periodontal instructors at UCLA, Dr. Takie, whose favorite phrase was  “you show more or have them no more” which means that you did gum tissue reduction to eliminate periodontal pockets in order to save your teeth. That process can lead to substantial issues associated with post-op sensitivity and additional decay problems. The new LANAP procedure however allows patients to avoid all these issues. This is obviously a new procedure it has only recently received FDA approval in 2015 and so it will be interesting to see how valuable this process is. The reason that I am mentioning all this is we have a large number of patients that I think can benefit from this process and so don’t be surprised if you hear our hygienist mention it. Hopefully it will truly become the “holy grail” and we will be able to save a lot more teeth.