Clinical effects of antimicrobial photodynamic therapy to non-surgical periodontal treatment: randomized controlled, single-blind, split-mouth clinical trial

To investigate the clinical effect of antibacterial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) combined with scaling and root planning (SRP) in the treatment of chronic periodontitis. A randomized, controlled split-mouth design was used in this study. Sixteen patients with chronic periodontitis who met the inclusion criteria were randomly divided into experimental side and control side. The control side received conventional SRP, and the experimental side received SRP combined with aPDT treatment (SRP+aPDT). At each time point, PD, PLI, and BI were improved on the side treated with SRP+aPDT compared with conventional SRP. The improvement of BOP% and PLI in the SRP+aPDT group was significantly better than that in the conventional SRP group at 3 months after treatment (P < 0.05). aPDT can improve gingival bleeding and control periodontal inflammation in the early stage of chronic periodontitis.