Abstract
Purpose :
Primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) and periodontitis have both been shown to be inflammatory-driven processes, with several previous studies suggesting that there may be a link between periodontal disease and an increased risk of glaucoma. The purpose of our study was to explore further the association between chronic periodontitis and glaucoma in a retrospective case-control study design. Our null hypotheses stated that POAG did not affect the prevalence of periodontitis, prevalence of tooth extraction, or average number of tooth extractions as compared with healthy, age-matched patients without POAG.
Methods :
Patient information was extracted from charts in the BigMouth Dental Data Repository for UTHealth School of Dentistry from 2006-2019 among patients between ages 18-80 years old. Patients that had identified as having a diagnosis of glaucoma on a medical questionnaire were selected for the glaucoma case group and randomly selected, age-matched patients who had reported as having no diagnosis of glaucoma on the same medical questionnaire were selected for the controls. There were 330 patient charts in the BigMouth database that met the inclusion criteria for the glaucoma group. For the controls, 330 age-matched healthy patients were selected. The three main outcome measures that we identified during data extraction were periodontal disease, history of tooth extraction, and number of teeth extracted. Chi-square, Student's t-test, and one-way ANOVA calcuations were performed for statistical analysis purposes, as appropriate.
Results :
There was a statistically significant increased prevalence of patients with periodontal disease among older glaucoma patients aged 70-79 years vs. controls (p=0.035). This was the only age range in which we found a statistically significant difference in the prevalence of periodontal disease between test and control groups. There was no statistically significant difference in the prevalence (p=0.800) or average number (p=0.653) of tooth extractions between the two groups.
Conclusions :
Our study found a statistically significant increased prevalence of periodontal disease among older glaucoma patients aged 70-79 years old compared to controls, although this association was not found to be similarly significant within the other age ranges. This finding corroborates previous studies that concluded that there is in fact an association between periodontal disease and an increased risk of glaucoma.
This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.