Inappropriateness of the term "periodontal disease"

Abstract

Traditionally, diseases that affect the periodontium have over the years been referred to as periodontal disease. This implies that these diseases are a single disease entity or only one disease, "periodontal disease," affects the periodontium. To date, dental literature is replete with several diseases that affect the periodontium. Most of these diseases exhibit unique bacteriological, immunological, biochemical and clinical features. It is these characteristics that qualify them to be regarded as individual or different disease entities. Biased by these recent reports on distinct diseases that affect the periodontium, several dental authors have written articles where they have preferred the term "periodontal diseases" to "periodontal disease," when discussing and reporting on the diseases that affect the periodontium. This paper suggests and discusses the reasons why scientists have continued to use the term periodontal disease and presents arguments why this terminology is inappropriate. It is suggested that the term "periodontal disease" be replaced by the term "periodontal diseases".