All Collections
Charting
Perio Charting
Charting A Perio Exam - Periodontal Charting | Dentally
Charting A Perio Exam - Periodontal Charting | Dentally

How to record a perio exam, compare exams and record double digits. Record bleeding, suppuration & furcation as part of your perio charting.

Shelley Withington avatar
Written by Shelley Withington
Updated over a week ago

Perio exams are a key part of the wider periodontal charting process. In this article, we guide you through how to conduct effective perio exams using Dentally. Please ensure you also visit the articles below which explain more about how Perio exams work in Dentally:

Starting a New Perio Exam

You can access and chart 6 pocket Perio exams for a patient by selecting the 'Perio' tab at the top of the patient's record. The most recent exam will be displayed when you enter this screen, or if none has been recorded in the past, just go to the 'Create a New Exam' button.

New Exam - Blank or Clone?

When creating a new Perio exam where the patient has an existing exam on display, you can choose between creating a new blank exam or 'cloning' the exam on display. Cloning will create a new exam, dated today, but will carry forward the recordings taken on the previous exam. This is useful to record only the changes or to clearly highlight improvement or decline when recording, or when a partial exam was conducted previously.

New exam, clone exam and blank exam buttons in button in Dentally, relating to perio exams.

Recording the Results

Depending on how you have your settings for the view and workflow of the exam, run around both sides of each arch, recording the Pocket Depth and then the Recession on the available teeth. With automatic progression, the cursor will move to the next available pocket once a number had been entered, or with manual progression, hit Tab or use the cursor keys to move to the next.

Upper palatal chart measuring pocket depth and recession of teeth

If a tooth has been marked as missing or extracted, unerupted etc - then a perio exam cannot be charted around it as it will not be shown on the chart.

Recording Bleeding, Suppuration & Mobility

These recordings can be made in two ways:

Using Keys:

While the cursor is in the correct position to mark bleeding, suppuration, furcation or mobility, simply press the corresponding key on the keyboard:

To record double-digit - select "d" on the keyboard

Press 'b' to record bleeding

Press 's' to record suppuration

Press 'f' to record furcation and repeat the keystroke to record furcation of stages 2/3

Press 'm' to record mobility and repeat the keystroke to record mobility of stages 2/3

With all of the above, pressing the key again will remove the recording.

Using the Mouse

Click the corresponding point on the table beneath the graphical chart for each of the desired inputs. As with the keyboard input, clicking a second time will remove bleeding and suppuration, or multiple clicks will set the stage of mobility or furcation.

The Plaque & Bleeding Chart

To chart the percentage of surfaces with plaque and bleeding, press the Plaque & Bleeding tab at the top of the exam.

Plaque and bleeding statistics

Here you start by recording bleeding on the available surfaces, then switch across to recording the plaque.

Charting Bleeding and Plaque

By clicking on either ‘Bleeding’ or ‘Plaque’, you add a label to a tooth surface, turning the surface either red for ‘Bleeding’ or ‘Yellow’ for plaque or if you want to add both bleeding and plaque, the surface will be coloured orange.

The percentages of available surfaces where bleeding, plaque or both is present will be calculated and shown.

Bleeding and plaque chart

Renaming the Exam

Once an exam is saved, it will be named with today's date and the initials of the logged in clinician who recorded it. If you wish to rename an exam with a specific name to help you find it later, you can do this by clicking the edit button by the exam name.

Name and date of a perio exam in Dentally

Editing a Perio Exam

Once saved, a perio exam can be edited for up to 24 hours after pressing the Save option.

Did this answer your question?