PerioProtect Method® and Perio Trays®

“…In a generation, trays are going to change the face of dentistry.”

One clinician’s view on the PerioProtect Method® and Perio Trays®.

By Anna Sacks Download the article (Acrobat PDF)

As a periodontist of 43 years I’m naturally leery. I started using this product in 2007 after I’d caught wind of it through various journals. I thought it might have some potential because it’s got a good scientific basis to it, so I decided to give it a try. Now, I think this tool is as powerful as the toothbrush, and I think in a generation, trays are going to change the face of dentistry.

In the five years you’ve used PerioProtect®, how has it worked out for you?
The Perio Tray® is a fabulous product. I mean it’s not a cure-all but it is probably the strongest tool I use in the maintenance portion of my practice. As I’ve used it, my use has evolved. When I first began to use it I limited it to those maintenance patients that I thought were failing, you know, excessive bleeding, poor home care, lack of compliance. As time has gone by I’ve changed to the point where it’s now an alternative to strict two or three-month recall and it frees up the patient a considerable amount in milder cases. I’m even beginning to use it now as a way to minimize the amount of periodontal surgery I do.

What was the process of incorporating the PerioProtect Method® into your practice like?
I thought it went smoothly enough. It took some education on my part because at the time my staff was not familiar with taking impressions or pouring stone. Once I determined that this was a product I was going to go with and continue to use, it was about a six-month process to get it incorporated. Up until then I had been doing all of these things myself, so I broke out of my normal periodontal routine and trained my staff, and after about a year things smoothed out.

Now my staff is very enthusiastic about it and my hygienists are comfortable spotting the patients they think it would help as well as explaining it to them. I keep the PerioProtect® website on my business card so we can refer patients to it and let them get an idea of what we’re talking about, and I think that’s been a useful tool.

What kind of changes have you observed since integrating this product?
It has minimized the amount of surgery I have to do, and quite frankly as a periodontist that has made my life quite a bit easier. It’s a whole lot easier to tell a patient I have three teeth I need to fix instead of when I was a young dentist and none of the medications were available. Back then I was doing full mouth surgery after full mouth surgery. It’s been a very powerful tool. I can’t say enough nice things about this product.

What would you say is its biggest benefit?
There many features that are hugely beneficial—maintenance, minimizing surgery, geriatrics—but the absolute biggest benefit without a doubt in my mind is it’s one of the few tools that helps with controlling bleeding. Over the last 20 years disease after disease has been found to be associated with periodontal disease and the bleeding and inflammation periodontal disease causes. I think there’s a tremendous health benefit associated with Perio Trays® .

Would you recommend this product to a colleague?
It works and it always works well. It’s a wonderful product. It’s not a stand-alone product but if you combine it with the other routine things that are used with periodontal disease, it’s a tremendous tool.

Posted with permission from the July 2013 issue of Dental Products Report® DentalProductsReport.com. Copyright 2013, Advanstar Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.