The Clinical Effectiveness of Subgingival Irrigation with Povidone-Iodine and Hydrogen Peroxide in Treatment of Moderate to Severe Chronic Periodontitis

Statement of problem: although mechanical debridement is considered as the conventional technique in the management of chronic periodontitis, the locally delivered antiseptic agents have also been investigated as an adjunctive therapy. purpose: the purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical effectiveness of subgingival irrigation with polyvinylpyrrolidone-iodine (pvp-i) 10%, h2o2 3%, and the combination of both in the measurement of probing depth and plaque and gingival indices of patients with moderate to severe chronic periodontitis. materials and method: in this double-blind randomized clinical trial, 16 patients with moderate to severe periodontitis were selected using the simple random sampling method. they had at least one tooth with a probing depth≥5 mm in each quadrant and had undergone phase i of periodontal therapy one month after dental scaling, the initial probing depth, plaque, and gingival indices were recorded and the selected teeth were randomly irrigated with pvp-i 10%, h2o2 3%, h2o2 3% + pvp-i 10%, or normal saline. the measurements were repeated five weeks after the procedure. the data were analyzed through running paired-samples t-test, analysis of variance (anova), wilcoxon signed rank test, and kruskal-wallis test. results: the mean differences in probing depth before and after subgingival irrigation in patients who were treated with normal saline, h2o2, pvp-i, and pvp + h2o2 were 1.29 mm, 1.35 mm, 1.47 mm, and 1.71 mm, respectively. this indicated a significant difference among all the groups ( p <05). furthermore, pvp-i had a positive effect on the gingival index but it had no significant effect on the plaque index. conclusion: subgingival irrigation is an effective adjunctive therapy to mechanical debridement in treating moderate to severe chronic periodontitis.