The relationship between periodontal disease and alcohol: a review of literature

OBJECTIVES The goal of the present study was to evaluate how the prolonged alcohol assumption in connection to the quantity of alcohol units may affect the health of oral cavity and to find preventive strategies to improve the oral health in alcohol addicted patients, dental treatments and professional oral hygiene for a better health and quality of life, by a review of the literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS The research was carried out us-ing the key words: “Alcoholism” AND “Alcohol Use Disorder” AND “Oral Care” AND “Periodontal Dis-ease” AND “Alcohol” in the PubMed database. RESULTS The research resulted in 21 arti-cles published in the period from 1995 to 2020. Articles were se-lected that searched for a correla-tion between oral health and the harmful use of alcohol. CONCLUSIONS The dental hygienist has the task of carrying out preventive educa-tion and helping alcoholic pa-tients to maintain good oral health since they are of primary importance for this type of pa-tient. Nutritional advice is also fundamental, even if alcoholic beverages are high in calories, there are no important nutritional elements that can cause an im-portant imbalance in the diet. The increased susceptibility to infections, the increase in bone loss and periodontal attachment, the greater risk of cancer of the oral cavity make it therefore es-sential to have recalls with peri-odic checks, performing nutri-tional assessments and imple-menting fluoridation programs in order to guarantee adequate maintenance of the state of health of the oral cavity. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE The negative effects of alcohol can increase the susceptibility of the host to infections, such as periodontitis.