Table 3.

Cultivable subgingival proportions of periodontal pathogens before and immediately after 2 supragingival tooth polishing procedures

	Supragingival air polishing			Supragingival prophylaxis paste polishing
Subgingival species	% pre-treatmenta	% post-polishingb		% pre-treatmenta		% post-polishingb
Non-clustered species:
Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans	0.04 ± 0		0.02 ± 0	0.03 ± 0		2.9 ± 0
Red complex species:
Porphyromonas gingivalis	3.5 ± 5.2	0.5 ± 0.8		9.7 ± 14.0	19.6 ± 19.1
Orange complex species:
Campylobacter species	5.2 ± 6.1	0.3 ± 0.7c		3.3 ± 4.3	3.4 ± 4.9
Fusobacterium nucleatum	8.2 ± 6.1	1.1 ± 2.0c		4.2 ± 3.9	10.5 ± 9.9
Parvimonas micra	6.9 ± 5.1	2.8 ± 3.6		12.3 ± 13.0	8.4 ± 8.5
Prevotella intermedia/nigrescens	10.5 ± 11.6	1.4 ± 4.3c		4.5 ± 5.0	14.7 ± 17.2
Total red/orange complex species	22.4 ± 16.4	3.9 ± 5.7d		18.4 ± 16.1	24.7 ± 21.3
Motile morphotypes	17.7 ± 23.6	2.6 ± 5.2d		10.7 ± 19.0	7.5 ± 9.6

Values are presented as mean ± SD per study subject.

^aThe average percentage of colony-forming units recovered for each species among total subgingival viable counts for species-positive study subjects

^bCalculated for study subjects who were positive for species at pre-treatment

^cValue significantly different from pre-treatment, p < 0.05; ^dp < 0.001