Adjunctive Home-Applied Dual-Light Photodynamic Therapy in the Treatment of Stable Chronic Periodontitis Shows Improvement After 3 Months

Adjunctive use of Lumoral®, a dual light antibacterial applied dual light photodynamic therapy (aPDT) in non-surgical periodontal treatment (NSPT) resulted in enhanced treatment outcomes at three months post-therapy, according to interim findings published in Dental Journal.

For the study, patients were randomized to receive NSPT, including standardized hygiene instructions and electric toothbrush, scaling and root planing, or NSPT with adjunctive Lumoral® treatment. A complete clinical intraoral examination was performed in the beginning, at three months, and at six months. The study is a single-site, randomized clinical trial designed to ascertain the efficacy of the regular home use of dual-light aPDT in periodontitis patients.

This interim report included three-month results of the first 59 consecutive randomized patients of a total of 200 patients that shall be recruited for the entire clinical trial.

At three months, bleeding on probing (BOP) was lower in the NSPT + Lumoral®-group than in the NSPT group (p = 0.045), and more patients in the NSPT + Lumoral®-group had their BOP below 10% (54% vs. 22%, respectively, p = 0.008).

In addition, patients in the NSPT + Lumoral®-group improved their oral hygiene by visible-plaque-index (p = 0.0003), while the NSPT group showed no statistical improvement compared to the baseline. Both groups significantly reduced the number of deep periodontal pockets, but more patients with a reduction in their deep pocket number were discovered in the NSPT + Lumoral® group (92% vs. 63%, p = 0.02).

Patients whose number of deep pockets was reduced by 50% or more were also more common in the NSPT + Lumoral®-group (71% vs. 33%, p = 0.01). Patients with initially less than ten deep pockets had fewer deep pockets at the three-month follow-up in the Lumoral® group (p = 0.01).

The authors concluded that the results after 3 months indicate that regular adjunctive dual-light aPDT therapy applied with a Lumoral® device can successfully enhance NSPT results; however, results after 6 months are necessary to validate the effectiveness of the treatment.

Reference

Pakarinen S, Saarela RKT, Välimaa H, Heikkinen AM, Kankuri E, Noponen M, Alapulli H, Tervahartiala T, Räisänen IT, Sorsa T, Pätilä T. Home-Applied Dual-Light Photodynamic Therapy in the Treatment of Stable Chronic Periodontitis (HOPE-CP)-Three-Month Interim Results. Dent J (Basel). 2022 Nov 2;10(11):206. doi: 10.3390/dj10110206