Evaluating the efficacy of saliva drainage and buccal swab sampling techniques in diagnosing periodontitis: A review

Periodontitis is a periodontal tissue infection that developed from gingivitis to chronic, destructive, and irreversible. Periodontitis can be diagnosed through clinical examination and laboratoris like non-invasive sampling methods using saliva. This review aims to compare the results, advantages, and disadvantages using saliva draining method and buccal swab as a method to diagnosing periodontitis. A comprehensive literature search was conducted using PubMed, NCBI, Scopus, ScienceDirect, ResearchGate, and relevant keywords to identify studies comparing buccal swab and draining saliva methods for periodontitis diagnosis. Buccal swab is a non-invasive method, affordable, scalable, and has a minimum discomfort. The draining method offers enhanced biomarker detection accuracy, thereby serving as a more reliable tool for periodontal disease assessment. The draining saliva method has also been shown to be more effective in diagnosing periodontitis compared to the swab method.