Open Dental Forum

Is there any way to add negative numbers to Gingival margin data so i can record not only tissue recesion but gingival hiperoplasya too.


Thank you very much.

All the GM numbers are implied to be negative. Hyperplasia would actually be a positive number. We don't yet support hyperplasia entries.

Clinical attachment level (CAL) is defined as the pocket depth (PD) less the difference between the free gingival margin and the cervical-enamel-junction (FGM-CEJ), or,

CAL = PD - [FGM-CEJ]

For a healthy patient the CAL is typically <1 mm,
slight perio 1-2mm
moderate 3-4mm
severe >=5 mm

The "gingival margin" in Open Dental is more like CEJ-FGM and defined to be negative (but entered as a positive number). So, the only choices available in this software package are entering nothing (and ignoring this measurment) or entering positive values (recession). Most people don't have recession, or at least not on more than a few teeth. In other words, most people will have negative values of "gingival margin".

Can we please have the ability to enter negative gingival margin values so that we may properly document these values in our electronic charts!
If I were a periodontist I wouldn't be able to use Open Dental to chart because of this difficulty. I understand that dental practice in reality and historically often sweeps periodontal monitoring under the rug or merely tracks pocket depths, but standard of care is to track CALs.

Does anyone else out there have an opinion?

It's request 1350. It sounds like you would like to make positive FGM entries (hyperplasia) on the vast majority of measurement points. I have heard some demand for allowing such entries, but I was under the impression it was for more isolated situations. Also, it's not as easy to add as it sounds. We're going to have to visually differentiate between + and -, but I'm not sure there's room for plus or minus signs. So some thought is going to have to go into it. We might do it using colors.

I ran into this problem today. There's no way to chart the amount of hyperplastic tissue. As a periodontist, this is a feature I could use often. I would love to see this implemented soon.

V12.4 Perio charting now supports positive gingival margins aka hyperplasia. http://www.opendental.com/manual/perio.html Is that soon enough?