Drug-induced gingival hyperplasia and scaffolds: They may be valuable for horizontal food impaction

Food impaction is a severe clinical trouble that bothers most people especially middle aged and old people. It is reported that the rate of food impaction is 92.2%. The incidence of 40-59 years old is 98.9%. It is a disease of high prevalence in population. It has influenced people's social intercourse and everyday life because it may cause halitosis, gingivalitis, periodontitis, gingival abscess, alveolar bone absorption, root caries, eventually lead to severe results from teeth loose to deletion and so on. Several reasons are involved with food impaction such as gingival recession, periodontal disease, caries, age, excessive attrition, etc. Food impaction can be divided into two kinds: vertical and horizontal food impaction. At present, there are some clinical methods such as crown or dental filling for vertical one, but horizontal food impaction is still difficult to deal with. Though some methods are being adopted like making crowns and removable obstructers, the problems have never been settled effectively for the injury to teeth and inconvenience of these treatments. Here we put forward a hypothesis that periodontal tissues can regenerate much the same as normal situation by way of using drug to induce gingiva hyperplasia initiatively and implanting scaffolds. Then horizontal food impaction will be cured when the interproximal clearance is filled with periodontal tissues. It will bring the patient hope. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.