Amoxicillin/metronidazole or scaling and root planning to the treatment of chronic periodontitis

Keywords: chronic periodontitis, antimicrobian, meta-analysis        
Objective: Evaluation of treatment with amoxicillin or metronidazole  in comparisson to scaling and root planing in the treatment of chronic periodontitis. Methods. systematic review and meta-analysis. Randomised clinical trials obtained from the databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, SciELO, Cochrane and Scopus from 1989 to September 2009. The study was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analysis. The search started with 2895 articles from the PubMed database, EMBASE, Cochrane, Scopus, and Scielo. From this initial number of articles, 10 publications were selected and included in the study according to fixed criteria. Those authors that did not clearly establish inclusion criteria for the patients, or in which pharmaceutical forms were different from other studies, were discarded. When analyzing the main requirements for selecting the papers, we observed differences in answers related to design and form of result presentation. Studies of randomized clinical trials (RCT) that included adult patients of both sexes aged between 21 and 80, diagnosed with chronic disease and treated with amoxicillin and/or metronidazole or scaling and root planning. Results: probing depth showed a value I2 = 95%, the greatest effect is obtained with the study Mointaghavi, SMD -4.2160 [-4.9295, -3.5025] IC 95%. For clinical attachment level was high heterogeneity, I2 = 81.6%, with a total effect value of 0.45. Bleeding on probing showed I2 = 97%, with a total SMD -1.053. In relation to plaque index value I2 was 0%, showing a null effect of treatment, the greater effect was obtained in the test Feres, 2001 with a SMD of 0.5. Conclusion. this metanaalysis showed that the use of antimicrobians have similar effect to SRP treatment. It is known the health depends on several determinants, so the professional could chose the treatment after evaluating the context of each patient has. (Doctoral Fellowship of Secretary of Science and Technic of National University of Cordoba -Res HCS 2276/09).