Oral status and aesthetics after nonsurgical periodontal treatment: Do patient's perception and dentist's evaluation agree?

OBJECTIVES: Periodontal healing is often accompanied by side effects, which may cause an aesthetic deficit. The present investigation was focussed to compare patient's subjective perception of their posttherapy aesthetics with the objective measures of the results. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Survey results from patients (subjective parameters) on oral status and aesthetics were compared against routine clinical parameters and corresponding survey results from treating dentists (objective parameters), both before and after periodontal treatment. Subjective outcome parameters were then suitably transformed and compared with the objective ones to investigate the agreement between patients' perception and actual outcomes. RESULTS: Objective recordings of periodontal status by the dentist and subjective awareness of the patient are quite contradictory to each other for almost all participants. Further, it was found that their aesthetics in the front were better after treatment, but dentist professionals targeted for future treatment needs. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, it was found that patients improved aesthetically on the upper jaw front after the therapy, which was not shared by the dentists. This discrepancy was due to the clinicians' view on more aesthetic corrective procedures than on patients' need.