Issue: Vojnosanit Pregl 2016; Vol. 73 (No. 6)
Comparison of cefixime and amoxicillin plus metronidazole in the treatment of chronic periodontitis
Authors:
Smiljka Dukić*, Stevo Matijevi憇, Dragana Daković*‡, Tatjana Čutovi槇
Background/Aim. Despite significant advances in currentmedicine and improvement of overall health education, chronic
periodontitis is still a widespread disease. Losing teeth is the
most serious complication of this particular illness. The aim of
this study was to examine patients with chronic periodontitis in
order to evaluate the efficacy of non-surgical therapy and combination
of amoxicillin and metronidazole compared with cefixime,
which has not been so far used for the treatment of this
disease. Methods. Adult patients with chronic periodontitis (n
= 90) underwent non-surgical periodontal treatment (zero-day)
and then randomly divided into three groups. The group I
served as a control, the group II was additionally treated with
the combination of amoxicillin and metronidazole (for 7 days),
while the group III was treated with cefixime (also for 7 days).
To assess the condition of periodontium before and seven days
after the therapy, four clinical parameters were used: gingival
index (GI), bleeding on probing (BOP), probing depth (PD)
and clinical attachment level (CAL). Results. On the day 7 after
the beginning of the therapy, we found that all the three
groups of patients had statistically significant clinical improvement
of three parameters: GI, BOP and PD, but not of the
CAL. However, the improvement of PD was only statistically,
but not clinically significant. The improvement in the control
group of patients on the day 7 was 19% in BOP and 28% in
GI; this improvement was statistically highly significant after
the addition of amoxicillin plus metronodazole (71% in BOP
and 77% in GI) or cefixime (62% in BOP and 82% in GI).
Compared to the combination of amoxicillin and metronidazole,
cefixim was statistically significantly more effective for GI
(p < 0.05), while for the other three clinical parameters their effects
were equal. Conclusion. The conjunction of amoxicillin
plus metronidazole or cefixime to the causal treatment of patients
with chronic periodontitis led to statistically significant
improvement in efficacy in relation to GI and BOP parameters,
while cefixime was statistically significantly more efficient than
the combination of amoxicillin and metronidazole for GI.
