“What is the 1st diagnostic finding that a periodontist looks in his patient’s mouth”? Bleeding on probing and “what are the most important diagnostic tests which he tends to miss? Erythrocyte counts, Hb levels,microhematocrit values. These are the diagnostic tests which are missed by dentist and are of paramount importance in medicine for providing multifactorial measures of systemic response to infections/ inflammatory diseases. Epidemiological studies suggest that periodontitis is associated with increased risk of systemic diseases like cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular ischemia, atherosclerosis. A lot of association of chronic systemic disorders leading to anemia has been totally proven in medicine. In chronic diseases like parasitic infections, bacterial and fungal infections, neoplastic illnesses anemia has been noted and hence it has been given the term anemia of chronic disease. Also periodontitis patients show various acute/ chronic immune activation and may develop anemia called anemia of chronic disease. Despite a lot of association of periodontitis and various systemic conditions very little work has been attempted at association between periodontitis, hemoglobin levels and erythrocyte counts with very few available reports by Scannapieco, Philip et al., JW Hutter. Hence this original research study was undertaken to investigate the possible relation between periodontal disease and Hb levels in systemically healthy subjects compared to chronic severe periodontitis subjects.

Keywords: Periodontitis; Hemoglobin; Anemia of Chronic Disease.