**4. Results**

In the vast majority of the examined patients, no symptoms of adverse e ffects related to the treatment were observed during the scheduled follow-up visits. The protective layer which, according to the manufacturer, was supposed to protect the patients from rapid decrease in drug concentration in the pocket within 8–10 days was unnoticeable. At the last follow-up visit, purulent e ffusion in the area of drug application was found in one of the patients; inflammatory erythema and exfoliative gingivitis were found in another patient, also in the area of drug application.

Table 1 presents a summary of clinical examination results for the jaw and, separately, for the pockets from which microbiological material was collected and into which the assessed gel was administered, as well as the pockets which were treated using solely SRP (the control group). In the jaw, the treatment resulted in significant decrease in the BoP index (−33%), shallowing of the average PD (−0.45 mm) and PD on the interproximal surfaces (−0.55 mm), as well as decrease in the number of areas with CAL loss ≥5 mm (improvement of the median by 11.5). In the pockets treated using the compared methods, the researchers found similar, considerable reduction in BoP (−49.2% vs. 47.5% for SRP) as well as shallowing of the average PD (0.82 vs. 0.83 mm for SRP) and, additionally, considerable improvement of attachment location in the control pockets (−0.81 mm). Two months after the treatment, no di fferences between the pockets treated with the use of the evaluated methods were found in terms of the assessed clinical parameters.


**Table 1.** Results of the clinical studies.

Lack of significant differences in the final bleeding on probing (BoP) values (*p* = 0.73), average PD (0.53), and average clinical attachment loss (CAL) (0.63) between the pockets treated with SRP+A and SRP alone.

The results of microbiological observations are presented in Table 2. In general, no statistically significant differences in the assessment of the related variables (the same pockets before and after treatment), and the nonrelated variables (symmetric pockets before and after treatment using both methods) were found. The only exceptions concerned the pockets additionally treated with antibiotic gel. Two months post-treatment, a significant increase of *Treponema denticola* and decrease of *Micromonas micros* as well as a significantly higher amount of *Capnocytophaga gingivalis* in relation to the control pockets were found. For the latter, reduction in the amount of *Fusobacterium nucletaum* and *Micromonas micros* was considerably similar to the significant decrease after SRP.


**Table 2.** Results of microbiological tests.

The influence of the current periodontitis classification on the assessed amounts of bacteria is presented in Table 3. A small number of analyzed samples and lack of detection of particular pathogens in the pockets influenced considerable values of standard deviations and the significance of the intergroup differences. Quantitative differentiation of the studied compounds of the pocket microbiome was influenced to a larger extent by the degrees of periodontitis before the treatment (considerably higher number of TBC in degree B, as well as higher—though marginally—numbers of *Porphyromonas gingivalis*, *Treponema denticola*, *Prewvotella intermedia*, and *Capnocytophaga* in relation to C).


**Table 3.** Results of microbiological tests depending on the stadium and the degree of periodontitis.
