Dentist-Patient Communication of Treatment Outcomes in Periodontal Practice: A Need for Dental Patient–Reported Outcomes

Periodontal practice has made tremendous progress toward evidence-based treatment over the past decade. Importantly, a new classification scheme for periodontal and peri-implant treatments has recently been devised that is incorporating current evidence and enabling patient-specific periodontal care. However, this important progress can be further accelerated with the availability of patient-perceived outcomes of periodontal and implant interventions. The majority of existing clinical studies assess treatment effects based on clinician-measured surrogate outcomes, such as probing depth and attachment levels which are easily communicated to or perceived by dental patients. As dental patient–reported outcomes (dPROs) gain momentum in dental practice, our understanding of the true outcome of dental therapies is vastly increasing. In periodontal research in particular, the utilization of dPROs has clearly demonstrated that periodontal disease contributes to an individual's burden of disease in a substantial manner. Correspondingly, disease treatment interventions seem to lead to varying levels of patient-perceived improvements. The present editorial aims to highlight the importance of patient communication of treatment outcomes in periodontal and implant research and to review the information on available measures for capturing dPROs.