 Hello, everybody. Andrew Maesca here with dental tutoring. Let's talk about what you have to know about perio for the board exam. I will keep it simple, but key thing that you definitely have to know. Perio is not the same thing as gingivitis. Just because a patient has gingivitis, doesn't mean they will get perio, and a patient might have perio, but not have gingivitis. So make sure you did hear me on that one. So just because a patient has perio, does not mean that they will have gingivitis, okay? So perio happens as soon as that pocket hits four millimeters. Even if it's just one pocket, they have perio, okay? It is localized perio, but four millimeters means they do have perio, plain and simple. If their gums are perfect, they're pink, stippled, healthy, but they have four millimeter pockets, they have perio. So not to be confused with gingivitis, okay? So gingivitis is when you look at the gums overall. So if the gums are red, puffy, if they're bleeding, that means that the patient has gingivitis. But once you start to probe the mouth, probing is the only way to know for sure a person has perio. Even if you're looking at the x-rays, and it's pretty obvious there's bone loss happening, the best answer you guys for the board exam is, you can only tell if a patient has periodontal disease by doing those probing measurements. And probing should be done once every single year. You could do the PSR, which is a spot probe. That is where you would, how do I say this? Give numbers to all of the different sextants of the mouth. There are six of them. And depending on those numbers though, you will probably want to do a full mouth probe anyway. So another thing to know for the board exam is to properly know if a patient has perio, you can not only do a PSR every single appointment, it has to be a full mouth probe. Personally, in the real world, a PSR takes just as long as doing a full probe. So I prefer to do the full probe anyway. But for the board exam, they might ask you about a PSR charting, and that is done not every year, but every appointment. So they actually want you to do that PSR at every single appointment, but make sure to do the full probe once every single year. Cause that's the only way to monitor a patient's perio status, plus by taking vertical bite wings. If the board exam talks about perio, the best X-rays to take is those vertical bite wings, because those checkup X-rays you should be doing often anyway. I mean, not often, but not every 10 years, they should be done routinely depending on the patient. But if there's perio, those horizontal bite wings aren't good enough, or a panorex is not good enough. You need to take those vertical bite wings to really check those bone levels around that, or those teeth to see if the perio is getting better, staying the same, if it's getting worse, because perio could stay exactly the same. That is okay. As long as the teeth are clean, they're hopefully coming in every three months. If those six millimeter pockets stay the same, but there's less plaque, there's less tartar, that is okay, okay? That is possible. So do not hesitate. Oh, sorry guys, my light just went out. That's weird. Okay guys, totally awkward. I apologize, my light on my ring light literally just went out. I have to order another one. I don't have one. We were talking about perio, so I'm just going to continue with this, but I apologize so much. It probably looks very dark in here. I tried to open up the windows, but yeah, this is the natural light coming in. Anyway guys, sorry, this probably looks horrible, but anyways, let's continue on with perio. So another thing that I want to mention is if you have a patient that comes in, it's been 10 years since their last cleaning, obviously they need a lot of work done. The best thing to do is you need to have them come in for multiple appointments, okay? After everything's clean, it will probably take four, five or more appointments. Then you can check to see how things are doing. So if the patient has six millimeter pockets everywhere, they will probably need to be seen by a perio specialist, okay? So anytime, so the board exam wants you to know that if there's moderate perio minimum, they need to be seen by a perio specialist as well as you too, so like every other time, okay? We have a lot of patients that see a perio specialist every three months, but on their nine month re-care, they see us, okay? So please remember for the board exam that it needs to be, they need to see a perio specialist every three months if they have moderate perio, okay? So I just kind of wanted to give you guys the main things to know for perio. I will be having a board exam bootcamp September the first. So if you want to learn more, let me know because I do talk about more perio for that, everything that you have to know for the board exam. So I will leave the link for you guys for that on the bottom. Have a look and I will talk to you guys soon. I apologize again for my ring light. Yeah, I clearly need to order another one from Amazon. So I'm gonna go do that right now and I will see you guys in the next one. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.