I remembered some time ago I had a patient whose physician asked me to treat his periodontitis prior to his kidney transplantation. His physician thought the patient had periodontitis. This is a new trend that the patient had to be screen for various localized infection/disease prior to kidney transplantation and one of the localized infection that requires treatment is the dental periodontitis. (reference source)
The bacteria within the mouth can cause infection. The presence of periodontitis can cause the increase of bacterial growth. For the patient who has kidney disease, his/her immune system might be weak and can get infection easily.
For kidney transplantation, the medical surgeon would require patient to have dental checkup and treatment, and this includes the treatment for periodontitis. The reasons for dental treatment is that after the kidney transplant, the patient would be administered with drugs to prevent rejection of the newly transplanted kidney by the body’s immune system. These are immune-suppression drugs. And these drugs would decrease immune system response to bacterial attack. The patient would be more susceptible to bacterial infection during the immunal therapy after the transplantation. Thus, the doctor would have to make sure that the patient has no existing bodily infection. The dentist is asked to check for any dental infection and one of the common dental infections is periodontitis. With patient’ dental periodontitis under active control, this lowers the likelihood of bodily infection from the dental cause.
Written by Daniel Tee, DDS, MS
Practicing Family Dentist Serving the city of Tempe, Chandler, Phoenix, Gilbert, and Mesa in Arizona.
