Classification des maladies parodontales

Periodontal diseases are multifactor disorders (numerous modifying and aggravating factors), difficult to diagnose without the help of a classification that allows comparing the patient’s data to those scientific and epidemiologic data recently published. Such diagnosis implies a therapeutic strategy, and a prognosis adapted to each clinical case, taking into account the anamnesis and the result of the clinical examination. A new easier and more clinical classification of these periodontal diseases, based on the advances in scientific knowledge and on the epidemiological data of the past ten years, has been proposed in 1999 during a worldwide consensus conference. Gingivitis, a specific disease of the superficial periodontal tissue, is largely described. Periodontitis which affects deep periodontal tissues may be identified as chronic periodontitis, or aggressive periodontitis, or as a manifestation of a systemic disease. New entities appear, such as the necrotizing periodontal diseases, the endoperiodontal lesions, and the occlusive trauma. Early periodontal diseases, due to their excessive dependence on the age, and persistent periodontitis, because of the heterogeneity of this group (recurrences, resistant diseases) have been suppressed from this new classification.