Personalized Periodontics: Tailoring Care for Individual Patients

Periodontal disease is a chronic, multifactorial condition that affects a significant portion of the global population. Traditional approaches to its management have often followed a generalized protocol. However, the advent of personalized medicine has ushered in a transformative era—one where periodontal therapy is tailored to the individual patient. Personalized periodontics integrates patient-specific data including genetics, systemic health status, behavioral factors, and risk profile to optimize diagnosis, prevention, and treatment outcomes. This article provides an overview of the P4 medicine framework—predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory—and illustrates how it is applied in periodontology. Through the lens of key risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and stress, this review emphasizes the need for individualized care pathways to enhance treatment efficacy and improve overall patient wellbeing.